Ace. Sorry to hear your getting out of the business. The 7-2 swallow tailed Zing Thing you made me ten years ago was one of my favorite all time boards. I think shaping machines are not ‘cool.’ But, I don’t like electric locks, windows, etc in my pick-up truck either. Hopeless romantic I guess. Mike
I do just want to make it clear if I havent already that I dont think shaping machines are cool. But I can see why a business man, watching a growing surfing industry would think its a golden oportunity.
I’d rather have mine shaped or shape it myself… much more soul involved…
kind of a weird way to think about it.
but I can guarantee you that every great shaper out there is going to die one day
some later but most sooner than expected because of what we didn’t know at the time.
just like all the speculators who are stashing now to cash in later when it happens…
pretty sad right?
but once a great shaper can figure out how to store what they know into some bits and bites of some soul-less contraption, what they had to offer the world will never be lost for all the generations to come long after they are gone.
Aside from production, I see that to be the machine’s saving grace what ever that machine is and what it is best used for.
Imagine if your Skill 100 could be program to remember every masterful stroke and sweep made against the virgin foam and be able to play it back. What if you could teach it to be able to look at or feel a blank and understand the finished shape…
In the next fifty years where will guys like Jim Phillips or Bill Thraikill or Brewer be?
Giving lectures at the Surf Museum or Community College?
I don’t think so…
Who is spending the time required to document all the great craft knowledge that is lost with the passing of every “legend”?
All I see is coffee table books…
Nothing of real substance for the archivists or all the social anthropologists to come
other than perhaps maybe Swaylocks…
Quote:
In the next fifty years where will guys like Jim Phillips or Bill Thraikill or Brewer be?
Giving lectures at the Surf Museum or Community College?
I don’t think so…
Who is spending the time required to document all the great craft knowledge that is lost with the passing of every “legend”?
other than perhaps maybe Swaylocks…
Yes!!
We are the ones keeping the art an art… not a business.
The future of shapers is moving to forums such as these where experimentation will lead progress just like it did in the shortboard revolution where the backyard shapers turned the industry around because they werent fast enought to act.
In the future, when the machine shape novelty has worn off (ie market is no longer impressed or realises the flaws of b grade shapes) businesses will be head hunting shapers from forums like this to come and shape master patterns for their new products.
Swaylocks is the perfect place to pass this craft on. And people like Jim Phillips, Bill Thraikill, Brewer, Bill Barnfield are leading the way by sharing their knowledge with us in this forum. We are really lucky to still have them around and that they are so accessible…
The consumer (us!) owns the industry. If we dont like something, we wont by it, and it will die out. We can educate our friends and those we meet who are new to surfing etc about the values of a well made board and thus add value to hand shaped boards and shaping skills.
Recently a frind of mine bought a foam board for $700 to learn on and I was devistated. I explained that for similar money she could have had a board designed specificly fer her and the waves whe rides… after the chat she said that she was going to start looking for a shaper and sell the foam board even if she made a loss…
One for Us!!!
Yay!
rif.
I have never really been “IN THE BUSINESS”. Just going through a weird period right now. Don’t think I will ever stop shaping, you will have to pry my well worn rockwell 653 from my cold dead hands. Glad you liked the board. Started in a garage may end up in one, if I had one.
While I have an enormous respect for shapers with tens of thousands of board under their belt but I wonder if they can get close to the .0004" of a shaping machine. Maybe they can by vision and feel. Maybe not. Maybe it doesn’t matter as the foil of a surfboard is more about accurate flow than about accuracy at that level. I doubt that any shaper can get anywhere near the repeatability of a machine. Why would you want to? Every custom board is different.
I wonder if the CNC machines cost the same as a SKIL100 if there would be any shapers out there (if a shaper is guy with a planer). There sure is problemswith the CNC machines too, garbage in, garbageout certainly apply. Software is critical.
For me as a hobby shaper who will never get even close to the 1000 boards it takes to become a good handshaper I love the idea of a CNC machine. But I’m a geek.
regards,
Håvard
“For me as a hobby shaper who will never get even close to the 1000 boards it takes to become a good handshaper I love the idea of a CNC machine. But I’m a geek.”
I started out with a upside down picnic bench, a striped down blank and a cheese grater! Loved every minute of it!!
…let me tell yo, that there re no .0004" waves in perfection too…
I remember when the old timers bitched about the lack of skill needed to shape a close tolerance Clark with custom rocker. That wasn’t that long ago.
There are the shapers that can really shape and the rest of us that work off of a ready made template, be it a close tolerance blank or the very similar machine shaped blank. I think its all cool.