One of the benefits of shaping your own boards is that you can actually shape a board that is more suited to your style and level of surfing than buying one off the rack.
I have been watching board reviews and it’s seems they mostly review the top 5 to 8 brands. While the major brands offer a good selection of models, it seems odd that the reviews don’t incidentally discover a model from, lets say, a 9 to 15th ranked manf./shaper.
The big marketing game .with social media got to be constantly pushing the branding people forget quickly ,new surfing clips and reviews everyday. Death scrolling and algorithms…..not like before hanging out untill end of month for the surfing magazines or what your local shaper is doing in your area…..making your own boards is fun and challenging too..sometimes that new idea just does not work …or it ends up magic…feels pretty good to surf on something you made ,not slave to the hype…make my own fins sometimes too .my foils my templates.dont need computer hydro modeling, water is not that fussy
For me one of the major benefits, along many others is that you can shape something for the fun of it, something that i would not pay 800 to a 1000 because it would not have importance on my daily quiver, for example a longboard, a stinger, a kneeboard, a midlenght, a flex tail board, an aipa or a twinzer, bigger fatter boards also, fun boards that i can use or let friends borrow them.
Mainly things that i would like to try but wouldn’t wannna buy.
cheers and good waves.
If you don’t have a thorough understanding of surfboard design, have the skill to shape and glass a surfboard, making your own boards will not do anything except save you money. Getting a good board that is right for you from a really good shop will help you surf better.
Making your own boards is more of an ego trip until you make enough boards to make a good board. It takes a while.
I started making boards after surfing just a handful of years and stopped after 2 boards. I didn’t make another one for almost 25 years, and I did it because I wanted something the shaper I was getting boards from didn’t want to do. I only made strange designs because I can always get a really good board from many really good builders where I live. I was able to make something for a fraction of what a shop charged, but they didn’t always work out.
In hindsight, the journey I took didn’t help my surfing, but I learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t work. I learned a lot about using the tools from the many mistakes I made, and I learned how to glass and sand a board. If I stayed on the shop made boards, my surfing would have stayed at a higher level. I was tired of the crowds and losing the love of surfing, making my own boards gave me a new reason to go surfing and deal with the crowds.
Board reviews are your basic marketing hype.
Yeah it’s all about selling boards.
It’s funny that if the same surfers were to take the best board from the Stab in the dark series, they’d all have a different opinion. We all ride differently, and boards that work well for one person don’t work as well for others. Unfortunately, one board doesn’t work well in every kind of wave either, except maybe a modern longboard, or mid-length egg.
I know people who buy the newest flavors of boards, only to sell them after a short time. I guess it’s OK if you have all that disposable income.