doing everything with hand tools, just wondering what is best to take off the outer skins of the blank and eventually foil and rocker?
http://www.foamez.com/images/store/BLCKPLN.jpg
or
http://www.foamez.com/store/productDetails.cfm?prodID=56&prodIDCat=21
thx.
Your going to want to use the planer to take the hard shell or skin off. Then the surform works great on the softer stuff.
I agree, and you can use a sanding block w/ 36grit sandpaper - the coated kind for starting hardwood floors. Good luck - Taylor E. Olson
I remember skinning blanks with a surform in high school, a LONG time ago. Then my pal got a tiny little Rockwell planer with a 1-7/8 inch wide spiral blade and we were in heaven. I used my mom’s 1/4 inch drill to sand hotcoats. Hooooo, boy, those were the days. Talk about getting intimate with your work.
Planers nowadays can be had for 40 bucks or so from Harbor Freight or ebay (I have two). They’re not made as well as some of us might hope, but work just fine for the rest of us, and REALLY improve your shaping life.
Similarly, anyone skinning a blank with other than a planer probably hand sands their hotcoats too. Most of us have done this, but gotten a heck of a lot smarter since then. By the by, useful variable speed sanders can be had at the same locations for about the same price as the planers. I have, and use, a couple of them too.
I’m as cheap or cheaper than the next guy. That’s why I’ve always built my own boards, since 1969 now. Not using a planer and a decent variable speed sander, with the availability of these tools nowadays, is just too much.
My brother in-law recently gave me some old block planes he inherited from his grand father. I got the old stanley medium sized plane all tuned up and wow that thing rips through wood and foam. i got so excited I shaped a board with just it and a couple other hand tools. In fact, it was a styro board with a redwood stringer and what got me going was planing the stringer board with the hand plane to test it out. shaping the board by eye ball… countiing and blending and you know what…i ended up with a 3 stage rocker on a 7’4" hull. good block planes are bitchin. Thanks bro
