Just visited the Shape3D website and checked the links to the manufacturers using the software and machines. Guess what? On on less than half of the websites I was able to tell that they were use a shaping machine. The others were noninformative or said plain and simple “handcrafted surfboards”. Funny thing, it looks like the brazillians and the french are proud of the CNC machines while they are uncool in the US…
regards,
Håvard
not telling the truth about it is definitely uncool.
Aloha Haavard,
I’ve had some boards measured and ripped out on a machine but only realy 50% shaped… this may be uncool, but it alows you to have relitivly the same rocker foil / template in multiples so you can see how bottom contours ect work.
Part machined works for me because I have noise restrictions and cant run a powerplane when i feel like it, i dont have the extraction facilities and i can sit down with a shaper and draw a board on the pooter. My latest board is a gun and I ordered a second cut blank soon after i had the first in the water and discovered I’d glassed it too light. I waited an hour for the second blank, 4 - 5 hrs in shape/finish and i was glassing. From the first gun being ordered as a blank to the second one being tested in a screaming off shore and knowing id got it so so nearly right was about a month… some of that was waiting for decent size swell.
They are a pain because of the chinese factor, the market place swamped with cheapo boards that barely rate as average, but low and behold…
It still takes the knowledge and skill of the surfer/shaper to finish, and add magik to even the best of machine shapes.
And those who can realy use them are shaper/surfers
…I saw some boards of shapers who put a handcrafted decal but the boards are machine crafted…uncool
…I saw Mandala and other boards which are machine carved…but they sell the boards like super customs soul boards…I dunno if this is cool or uncool…
Hey there Haarvard,
Well… If youre making money from your surfboard shaping machine then probably they are the best thing since sliced bread.
I also think they would be great for experimenting with shapes if you had free reign with one cause you could change the aspects you wanted to but leave the rest identical - repetition becomes standard practice.
Dont know why but personally Im just not keen on a surfboard made by a machine… I like the craft involved…
riff
I don’t know…it’s just a tool. Is is cooler to use a hand planer than a power planer?
I was talking to a young up and coming shaper the other day. He sells a lot of boards in Japan. So I asked him if he used a machine for any of his production stuff. Mind you, it’s just him making the boards. He said that he wouldn’t consider using one until he had a thousand boards under his belt…that sounded pretty good to me. ( For me its only 970 or so to go!)
All of the close to 10,000 surfboards I have shaped have been shaped FROM START TO FINISH by me. I have never been a fan of “the machine”. It takes away the “fun part”. Skip called it “prostituting you craft” It’s main purpose was to put people out of work, lower payroll cost etc. Which is why at 58 yrs old I have become a ''dinosaur" and having to find a new career path. Guess “they” won. Is that “cool”?
…LeeV, its very simple
with a hand planer or electric one, you use your arms, you need to stay alert, if you do more passes, well you f–k up; etc
its all up to you, not a machine software controlled…
its not about being cool, but about using the tool properly.
Lotsa room to screw up with the machine too…I’ll give you this: If you are using the machine, you are a designer. If you are using a hand tool, you are a shaper.
These days you probably need to be able to do both to make a living at it unless you have a name like Frye.
I think LeeV has the correct perspective about this. The machine gets you quite a ways along in the shaping process. But, there is still plenty of room to screw things up in the finishing of the blank, and fine tuneing. The computer axiom of ‘‘Garbage in, garbage out’’ is certainly true. I have three boards that have been digitized at KKL. These boards have all been ridden for years,and PROVEN to have outstanding characteristics, and in two cases ‘‘magic boards’’, according to the owners. Those are the kind of boards that SHOULD be programmed into the machines. It, the machine, is just another tool to assist the shaper in reaching the finished stage. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not. There are subtle changes that sometimes occur in the machining process, as a result of operator input, that have to be dealt with by the shaper. The machines are doing ‘‘blank prep’’ for the shaper, nothing more. sometimes the prep is so good, that you only need sandpaper, and a good eye to bring it home. I don’t think that it is sinful, or uncool to use the machines. But I agree with Keith, that it is not cool to conceal that info from the buyer/customer.
My latest board is a gun and I ordered a second cut blank soon after i had the first in the water and discovered I’d glassed it too light. I waited an hour for the second blank, 4 - 5 hrs in shape/finish and i was glassing.
I think that we should put this in balance with an interview of Mike EATON that I read some years ago and where he was saying basically that if he spent more than one hour on a (long)board, it usually didn’t get any better.
So, let’s see: I assume that your blank comes out of the machine with rocker and foil in it, maybe even roughly shaped rails. And then your shaper still needs 4 to 5 hours to FINISH it???
Man, 4 to 5 hours is what it takes ME to shape a 9’6" from raw blank to finish, including templating, and I don’t consider myself a very experienced shaper. That’s because I don’t do “models”. If I were using the same template on every board I shape, I might probably be able to cut down that time in half, more or less. But if I were doing models, I would probably use a machine but I would spend 1/2 hour finishing each blank, max. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be worth it…
So I’m wondering: what’s the use of a machine if you have to spend 4 to 5 hours to finish a machine-shaped blank?
Not that I really can say cool or uncool, but a ghost is a ghost.
Is Bing “uncool” because Matt Calvani shapes “Bing” boards? Was Velzy “uncool” because Jim Phillips shaped his?
Even “cool” shapers (or designers) use tools to get their work done. I’m not calling anyone a tool - just saying that sometimes helpers breathe, sometimes they don’t.
I do think, though, that the guy who designed it should have a look. QC or final check or finish sanding…whatever you want to call it. “Uncool” is putting your name on something that you never see or touch in any way…
So, let's see: I assume that your blank comes out of the machine with rocker and foil in it, maybe even roughly shaped rails. And then your shaper still needs 4 to 5 hours to FINISH it???
I think he meant 4-5 minutes. That’s the typical time spent finish sanding a machined blank, not 4-5 hours. Brewer does a handshape in about twenty minutes if he’s cranking. Any good production shaper can crank boards out relatively quickly… but if they’re in business of SELLING boards, and have a line of established models, the machine helps them manage their time and resources.
Obviously, you need to put your time into the process of making boards start to finish if you want to have a real understanding of the craft. And like a previous post says - “garbage in, garbage out”. A machine won’t make a crappy design good. It will just allow you to crank out crappy boards faster. If you know what you’re doing, a machine can be a valuable tool.
I was talking to John Carper about his use of a machine (he has one in Oahu, and one in So Cal). He hasn’t touched a planer in years, although he certainly has put in his time and knows how to use one. John looks at his hands and says - “there’s nothing magic about these hands… what I want is for the shape to go from my head to the foam”. John now DESIGNS his boards on a computer. He can design a board, cut it out, finish sand and glass it, give it to his riders for testing, get feedback, and make EASILY MEASURED tweeks in the next versions… no guessing involved. One difference with John is he’s inputting the shapes in the first place. He’s not just giving KKL a board and saying “make more of these”.
Even great shapers have a hard time reproducing one of their handshapes accurately. How many times have you tried to have an old board reproduced and got back something totally different. A board is more than it’s length, width, thickness, and rocker. It’s not just point A and point B… it’s all the stuff in between. The machine is a good tool for reproducing magic boards. My all-time favorite longboard is a 9’2" hi-performance nose-rider by Brewer - one of his personal boards. I brought that board back to Nor Cal a few months ago and had copies made. Matt Ambrose cut the blanks and Michel Junod (who shaped for Dick in the 70’s) finished them off, using the original board for reference… What I got back were faithful reproductions of the original - minus the twist, and slightly more symetrical. The copy boards surf just like the original. Last week I returned from Kauai, where I showed Dick the first copy. He looked at it and said “it’s a Brewer”. That board now lives in Kauai, and worked great at Hanalei. The original now has to surf cold, crappy Nor Cal beach breaks.
Machines are totally cool. I love those shows where they go inside a plant to watch them make Hostes Twinkies, or bottling CocaCola, or making tires or whatever. Those machines are hypnotic. Or watching one of the tunnel boring machines. Very cool machines.
Oh, wait, you said shaping machines. My bad.
i think they are a good tool to reproduce a magic board-with the shaper’s permission. uncool? copying another shaper’s board without their permission, and even worse, putting your own label on it…
Just visited the Shape3D website and checked the links to the manufacturers using the software and machines. Guess what? On on less than half of the websites I was able to tell that they were use a shaping machine. The others were noninformative or said plain and simple “handcrafted surfboards”. Funny thing, it looks like the brazillians and the french are proud of the CNC machines while they are uncool in the US…
regards,
Håvard
Havard, I think it depends on the person, I am aware of some shapers in europe that don’t advertise thefact they order cnc’d blanks.
It’s main purpose was to put people out of work, lower payroll cost etc.
I dont know about that…
Its like any automated industry - Driven by the desire to balance the equation of High output, low quality risk and yes, expenses (including payrole, waste etc).
A more realistic outcome is that a shop with 2 shapers that complete X number of boards get a shaping machine. The shapers now dedicate thenselves to finishing the shapes and the machine does most of the repetitive work.
So now 2 shapers can finish 10 x X in the same time because their workload on each board has reduced 10 fold thanks to the new shiney machine.
no lost of staff… just increased output and change of roles for the shapers, and perceived quality improvement from the customer as they know each board will be exactly the same. Which is where I loose interest… I like the uniquness of hand shaped boards…
riff.
What if the shop Hired 2,3 or 4? Qualified shapers to produce those boards? Than instead of ONLY two people working there might be a couple more shapers that could feed their families pay their bills. They could even bring on a apprentice who could learn the complete art of shaping. Than not only would people be working, you could get that handshaped board from them. To say nothing of the exchange of ideas that evolve in the shaping process that could make that board even better. There is nothing more repetitive than sanding ridges off of machined shapes.
Depending on the output of the machine they may well need more shapers to come and help with the added output…
but thats growing a business… not costing people jobs…
alternative is they get priced out of the market and either have to specialise or shut up shop → enter the free-market = either you stay competitive with a desirable product that bears a market value higher than the sum of its components or you develop a process that costs less than the perceived market value of an established product…
both are good, competitive ways to grow a business, both have pros and cons. If you chose to specialise and things go wrong then the emotion involved may be similar to what artists experience when they have poured a lot of emotion into a peice of art that they think is really good but the market doesnt think so… easy to feel ripped off, but on what grounds? personal opinion, not market perception. Its hard, competitive work either way - just aimed at different market sectors.
rif.