Board production costs

Ha!  Almost spit my Corona (the Budweiser of Mexico) into my Keyboard again.  That would have been the second notebook that was a casualty of Swaylock laughter.  Instead it came up thru my nose.

Marso------You are neither a shaper nor are you a boardbuilder or glasser.    Furthermore;  You can't be a designer until you have been a shaper. 

Thank You thats what I’m saying. You got to do the steps…

And the point is?    Go to a Flight School in Florida, learn how to fly a DC9 or a 757 but no need learn how to land?

This has got to be staged. This guy can’t be for real!

I went to the Jim Phillips school of design. He welcomed me and took me to my luxury accomodations in the boiler room in back of the factory. Had a nice funky cot and a 5 gallon can nightstand. I was friggin so stoked I couldn’t sleep at night. You have to really want it… and I don’t think you will get it working on a computer keyboard and sending your stuff to someones glass shop. Shapers are a dime a dozen. They always were. It ain’t rocket science.

No dont ever learn how to glass bc I need the money!!

Sorry guys… I can’t stop f^ckin’ laughing…

Firstly:    WELCOME   Marso, welcome…  Welcome to Sway’s… You’re going to love it here!!!..

You’ve obviously felt that warm fuzzy feeling by now… lofl…

Perhaps you studied the wrong courses in  (University / College)… 

 

  Surfboard  building Psychology,  History  and   Philosophy  101’s   are required study before you dare board build here…Ha,Ha…"))

I can honestly say that I wish I had access to a blank cutting machine for the same reduction of waste materials at home…  I bet over 50% here wish they had cheap access to machined blanks that they designed…

No sorry,  MY bad…   Lets hack away at the foam with a spoke shave and antique planer…

One post closer to 500…

 

 

No sorry,,,,  MY bad...   Lets hack away at the foam with a spoke shave and antique planer..........

 

 

 

Why don't we just buy preshaped computer shapes, sand them for 2 minutes, then get someone else to glass it. Then we'll be "insta-shapers", just add money!!.

Build boards however you want, but when you get the same amount of respect as the effort you put into the board, don't complain. An experienced shaper could adapt his shapes to a machine, because he ALREADY has the knowledge and experience to KNOW what works for him and his customers. Just going straight in, and designing them without having hardly any real experience is just asking for frustration.

 

Unfortunately, there are no shortcuts if you want to learn, knowledge is crucial, but so is experience.

Oh boy I knew this thread would turn out like this!

I love BoardCad and for me it’s a great place to start for a design and a template. Damn you’ve got thinking! I could just send off my brd. file, clean it up a little, slap on my logo,
let someone else do the glassing and sanding, and I’m done! No dusty
clothes or garage any more, let others deal with the toxic crap and
smells, no more stickyness, itching or sinus problems. I’d love to try that on a board or two.

I’ve only made about 35 boards so far doing every step start to finish; designing, shaping, airbrushing, glassing and sanding. I usually lose money or break even but money wasn’t the intent. I wasn’t liking what was in the shops plus I had some really bad experieces with some local shapers. I wanted to make at least a few functional boards and learn how to do every step in the process. It’s extremely satisfying seeing me and my freinds competently surfing boards that I’ve crafted with my own hands. For the price of a new pro board I can make 3 of my own.

The only way to cut your costs is to DO IT YOURSELF, order in bulk to get a builders dicsount, barter and trade stuff, or strip old boards and reshape. Understanding your tools, studying and learning your craft will save you time and mistakes too in the long run. When I started messing around it cost me around $100 per board in 2001, now it’s around $200+. New boards haven’t really gone up all that much compared to the materials so I could see why a few here are pissed off.

 

 

 

Seems to me like if you design a board on your laptop and pay someone to cut it on a machine and then have someone glass it in a glasshop you are not going to save a lot of money. Plus you are neither a shaper or a board builder but just a surfer with a laptop.

     Probably OK if you want to mess around and just ride em but not a good plan if you are thinking of becoming a pro-builder. Of course is you have a rich daddy you can do it (like a few of the other “young guns” of shaping that are pumping out little fishies and baby Simmonsies that all look alike). Hell even their minimalist logos look alike. You too can join the fun.  (I feel better after that rant)

Marso------You are neither a shaper nor are you a boardbuilder or glasser.    Furthermore;  You can’t be a designer until you have been a shaper. 

Thats not true - I am sure there are many with the aptitude to design a decent board without having the aptitude of actually shaping it. Marso come back there is a lot to be gained from the community here. You are just getting poked fun at a bit for wanting ‘to have your cake and eat it too’. Share some insight on your methods and the response will be much different. We would love to see some of your designs - post some screen shots of your CAD files or some pics of your finished boards. You would be surprised how generous these people that have responded to your post can be.

Hey Beerfan.

My reply was pure sarcasm nothing more…

 If you read every reply post in this thread you’ll note approximately a 95% tone of negativity towards  the ideas and goals of our new member Marso…

My personal method of board building is at least twice as complicated as building a standard surfboard and I would love to have access to a CNC machine in my area to simplify my design ideas… This does not mean I haven’t paid my handshaping dues… It’s just another tool used to speed up the process…

 Perhaps this guy has some of the most groundbreaking developments in surfboard design but can’t shape by hand… So what… He’s still as welcome here as any of the old school snobs that throw their weight around here…

 That’s all I’m trying to say…

 

 

Jeez fellers....a man asked a simple question ffs! Never claimed to be a shaper, even siad so himself! Does being a "real shaper" come with an inability to read? Last 8 pages seem to suggest that.

Question was: How to reduce costs. The answear is: Do everything yourself. The rest is horseshit of the worst kind...high horseshit.

Isolating one variable at a time is what gets you a magic board.

There is at least one brilliant shaper (edit: who uses "THE MACHINE". I know there are a lot more who have refined a specific shape by hand etc) on this site who does that everyday. The result is: boards that work and are suited to the surfer who the board was built for.

Ye love handhsaping, good. I'm happy for you and hope you are happy as well. But this is not the only way to ride the kind of board that you want. Other more time efficient yet financially more costly avenues exist.

It very well could be that Marso time is more valuable to him than the cash (which he may or may not be short of).

 

 

Meyerhoffer won a design prize and got a lot of hype.

The boards just don’t perfom that well.

This shop had them at $700 to $800 and are now spinning them off for $350-400.

http://thirdcoastsurfshop.mwrc.net/en/category.php?product_category_id=4941

Just sayin’.

 

[quote="$1"]

Meyerhoffer won a design prize and got a lot of hype.

[/quote]

Exactly hype, marketing had to be involved. Hence not nesseserally a failure of the design. Just a possible overinflation of the functionality of the boards design features to sell more boards.

The board did exactly what its design, shape and features allowed it to do. Not what the marketing guys said it would/should do.

If they said:"Here we have this thing, I know its a wierd shape and all, and were not sure if it works, but have a bash of it anyway and tell us what you think".

People would have been raving!

designer wot f f s?

**
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 stick ya design shit up lets have a look  or shut the f##k up      ** this is not about a few old cnts with a skill**

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**

 its about a cocky button pusher bypassing whats  required      HANDS ON EXPERIENCE

 

to many calling themselves designers and shapers   need a reality check

including kite flyers

 

but then again i am just passing my opinion    freedom of speach remember

 

**  cheers huie
**

 

I don’t CARE if a guy uses a cnc to build boards.  What bugged me about marso’s post was the implied idea of ‘why should I learn to do something the hard way when I can have it quick and easy?’  For what it’s worth, I don’t respect that.  I don’t even know if using a CNC is a quick and easy method.  I’ve never done it.  But, I’ve often thought that this technology as it becomes more userfriendly will be the end of surfboard shapers when anyone can buy a program, pick which  board they want, hit ‘send’ and pick up your board later that afternoon from the surfboard mill.  

In a little surfing hamlet in Lichtenstein

there are plans to errect a statue to

Baron von Meyerhoffer the greatest

designer of car roof top decorations

in the history of their renown rush 

hour traffic.The battle to reduce

production costs and transportation

of finished goods have been overcome

by building the boards in country with 

immigrant labor from Illinois.As for

'Designing" we can all take a lesson

from this success.Hoorah and Huzza

long live the freedom to create and

express yourself with a well weilded

keyboard.!

…ambrose…

jerry lee lewis

could play with

his back turned

to the piano !!!

.

he couldn’t surf 

but his wife was

real young.

Does a machinist get dog piled for using a press instead of the fires of hell to forge something out of a chunk of metal? Do long time campers chastize young bucks for lighting a campfire with matches instead of the hard fought friction of dry wood against dry wood?

I can imagine the hell brought down upon the first shaper to put the holy sole of a Skil 100 against the delicate skin of virgin polyurethane. Seems only in surfing are the dues so high, the initiation so long, traditions held so sacred, and in many cases, non-locals treated with such disdain until such time that those dues are deemed indemnified. There is much to be said for the sanctity in surfing as almost no other religion/lifestyle/sport/hobby, however you consider its stake in your life, is afforded the same sense of ‘rite of passage’ or dues paying.

This forum, like no other, is one of sharing…sharing of information, skills, tactics, method, and traditions. Right or wrong, surfing culture has always dictated that titles are hard won through a graduated process of listening, listening, listening, trying, trying, trying. Surfing has always harbored a mix of individuals, hardcore luddites to persistent progressives. Someone had to be the first to try foam and glass instead of wood, someone had to be the first to add more than one fin, someone had to be the first to cut that log in half, but only the vaulted attain that status ince considered to have paid their dues.

There is more of a stake in surfing so naturally, there is more of a sense of protection. A reliance on nature for the very basis of it. Almost nothing about being able to surf can be manufactured. The sterilized atmosphere of wave pools attest to that. It cannot be reproduced just anywhere like a skatepark, or fake snow in Dubai, or a football field at any school. Naturally over the years, this has lead to a clique-ish mentality that permeates through much of the surfing community like no other.

Surfing/shaping n00bs take lumps, that’s just how it is, but in no other place I know are some of the absolute best in their relative crafts willing to impart free knowledge, years/decades of hard fought knowledge, to the n00bs to further such a small community, a subset of the surfing community that desires a connection, a mostly personal connection, to the chariot created to stand atop one of natures greatest creations if only for a short time.

Some want to feel it in their soul. Feel a connection to that board, an intimate understanding of the kinetic reaction between solid and fluid surfaces. “Feel”, “flow”, and “flex” are the terms endeared. Others approach from the theoretical trying to apply calculations and hypothesis to understand the why’s of the “Feel”, “flow”, and “flex”. “Flow rates”, “laminars”, “suction”, “repulsion”, “torsion”, “stall”, and “acceleration”, are the terms used. Both desire the same end result, the nirvana of the magic board.

Like vastly differing religions, the ultimate goal is remarkably similar, it’s just the placement of emphasis in between that causes the wars, the destruction, and the death. Surfing/shaping is no different. Enjoy every moment of it.