First board. It's going to pop out of a machine, then I'll just put a couple of finishing touches on it. I don't have skills or the space and time to learn in the bay. But I can use a computer… So in this day and age, I don't see why I can't make my own half decent board.
If it goes, or i know what makes it not go. I'll make more.
After researching, I kinda know what I want. This is a summer slop board. Something with volume, wide, flat with a big tail.
Shooting for 5'10" x 20 3/8" x 2 5/8"
With 1 1/4" tail rocker and 3 1/4" nose rocker
With FCS setup for quad fins
Question:
1. What are the red crosshairs on my top view in AKU? don't remember putting them and cant get rid of them.
2. Should I move the wide point forward a bit in the outline?
3. I'm going to add a concave into V through the fins. Where should this start? How do I get the slices to do a concave?
4. How thick should my nose and tail be?
5. Will the machine cut a battail? Or do i need to square it off and finish by hand?
One suggestion: grab some saw horses, and use a garage to finish the board…fyi- I shaped my first board in 5-6 hrs to completion-using hand tools, and basic shop tools to come up with a presentable board that surfed just fine!
Was it perfect? Ofcourse not.
Anyhow, I haven’t done a puter/machine shaped blank yet, but it should be a lot easier than hand shaping from scratch.
Now if you wanted to thin the nose foil or tail foil out a sliver more- that should be a cake walk. I mean, the shaping machines pretty much do the entire thing short of a few bits of fine-tuning here n there from vids I’ve seen.
To thin the nose and tail down more- I’ve used a power planer, or only a surform if that’s all I had avail…in a nutshell: power planer if you have it, then surform, finally sand-3 steps.the pp/planer used will end up with a few high spots on the deck-surform or sanding smooths it out…block plane stringer if it pokes out-important! light sand to clean her up…lots of work! now with a surform it takes a litte more time, but is much safer. For my tail rocker I kinda put a slight upward bend a foot up from tail… This would be if the board was floating on the water right side up- you’d see a slight upwards bend… Bottom up shaping you see a slight downwards bend… Then I had a issue! I had a hump to get rid of…LOl
So I decided to scrub it out with a surform… All I did was blend it into the existing rocker. Fyi- this thinned my tail down substantially! I then checked my foil measurment out a foot up or down from a side I was checking… For my nose foil/ thickness my magic # fell in at 1 and 1/4" thick, my tail section a foot up fell in at a inch and a half… You can also check the center wp periodically- also with your calipers to check your entire boards foil/thickness. In theory, you can vitually check in inches if you really wanted to. But I don’t.
I actually shape with a combination of eye-balling it, touch, fEel and using measurments. I also use a level and rular. A lot of this stuff can be learned by others, but some of it is learned out necessity. What do YOU want in your surfboard!? Know what you want and throw it in the mix…
For your nose rocker, you should already have it, but you can feather in a bit more with a power planer to a third way down from tip. Just feather it in with a low cut setting… No need to tinker with the settings. Same with taill rocker… You can feather it in bout a third the way up from taill. You can even use a surform if that is all you an swing. I know cuz I shaped 2 boards with one;) LOl
As for concaves… Perhaps some guru who shapes 1000’s of boards will chime in.
For your vee, in general I’ve read one can shape it up to 1/3 way up the tail. But I’ve done mine only about 3" or so up from the fins… But yeah, you DO want the hard vee (between fins), and also out the tail. Good luck man! I’m trying to start #4, but I smashed into a car and am paying out he ears for damages. I should have my blank shaped in another mos if I’m lucky…
“Old school means real.”. - saying from a wise man.
The outline is ok,the rocker and foil need some help,the tail looks like a long flat spot instead of a smooth curve.Heres a file of a similar board I recently shaped for myself,mine has a deep double concave starting at the entry rocker that fades into a 1/4" vee starting just before the front fins and flowing out the tail.
LOl