Handshaping Rocker

If it isn’t off the machine it is hand shaped rocker every time. What I am looking for in an unworked blank is the places I like the curves and where I don’t, where i don’t is the starting points.

From these spots is where the alteration of the rockers begin, seeing it mentally first and then manually morphing it into what you want. Sometimes I am feathering cuts as far up as the middle, but depending on the blank and the rocker, it will be completely different board to board.

But begining on zero keeps from altering the rocker where where your are starting at and opening up the cut to only about a 1/16th of an inch, this seems like a an extremely small amount to beusing, but the foam will go away a lot faster than you think.

Most beginner shapers run out of foam before they attain the shape they are/were hoping for, like I say, " a zillion small cuts or one big oops", it’s your choice

The rail templates are some the same, when I am duplicating a shape for a model that is hand shaped or just keeps track of how left and right are in respect to each other.

I’ve made mine from door skin ply, but make the top and bottom temps to look like long “L’s”, I can overlap the long sides and put spring clamps to hold them together. I have taken the profiles from some of the oddest and weirdest boards I have shaped, plus the old day to day standards. This way I can combine the profiles to fit “almost” any rail shape, they don’t have to touch the foam at every place, but give you an eyeball as to what is right and what needs to be adjusted.

There are boards I shape, everything seems to be right on, but intuition tells me to check with the rail profiles, it isn’t so much the actual rail, but the area from the top or bottom of the rail to the center of the deck where extra thickness can sneak in and be hardest to detect.

Just because myself and other well seasoned shapers are in the trenches every day doesn’t mean we to are immune to problems in the shaping room, we just can fix them easier, I think?

Hi Jim -

Speaking of rail profiles... I made a contour gauge for a friend who simply won't use it.  "It drives me crazy" he says.  He'd apparently rather not know how far off symmetry his rails really are.

I like the mm scale on the Pleskunas calipers for checking that troublesome area you mention... like 3" or 4" from the stringer on either side all along the length of the board.

I also like the rail contour gauge that Wayne Rich was using at Sacred Craft.  It looks like an oversized letter 'J' with feelers pointing towards center all the way around.  I might go ahead and make one like it.  Will try to post pic below.  (It's that weird looking thingamajig on the floor)

Between my rail contour gauges and my calipers, I'd like to think I'm at least pretty close most of the time but know I'm not setting any speed records getting there.

 

hey Hunter

what you doing buying another custom from Greg. 

supposed to be making your own over here

:-) 

just kidding…

 

when i saw chandler’s post in zombieland  it reminded of way back when.

is he moving out your way or is HOHAR labs coming out here?

 

btw

is greenroom that much better?

interesting to see it all the way out herein fgh land

 

-bernie

 

Bernie!

Confession time:  The boards I make go to others.  If its under my feet, it comes from

Mike Daniel or Greg Griffin!  (We only get so many waves to ride over here, you know--no time to mess with wonky stuff).

I'm pumped on the new Griff... it is very similar to a freakin' awesome Coil that I have... a touch narrower, thicker and thruster rather than quad... very interested on the comparison. 

No current plans to move Hohar out to Oahu, but Greg is contemplating the surf soaked beaches of Southern NC... hahahahahahaha.

I am lucky enough to have a few really good surfers willing to ride my boards though, feedback is interesting, plus its nice to see someone take one of your boards to task.

As for greenroom resin... in my limited experience it is very easy to use and I have gotten better results from a finishing perspective (less fisheyes and zits and junk) and fewer pinholes.  I know the chemist who designed it... he is a rad guy.  Only downside for me is that it comes in one flex mod... I like to use the RR 2020 sometimes.   

Hope all is well with you!

hunter

Alright:  I have followed Mike Daniel's advice and created two rocker templates with Deadshaper's rocker scribing technique.  One template for the intended rocker and one from the existing blank.

This was very instructive, because I have less room than I thought I would.

It also revealed that I may need to 'tilt' the board inside the blank to get the nose rocker I want.  (I have alot of room and thickness in the tail and enough overall thickness to fit my deckline in as well). 

Has anyone done this? 

It also seems like there are few, if any correlating curve sections between the blank and my rocker template.  There is gonna be some work to do here. 

Looking through the posts, I feel like I had a bit of a lightbulb moment on the stagger cut concept:  Is it the same idea as rail bands?  When I traced my templates onto butcher paper, I could use a straight edge to draw facets to approximate the curve... like you would doming the deck into the rail (the rocker... especially the nose, looked sort of like a huge 'deck rail' cross section). Is that sort of how the stagger cuts work?

I think I will need to bang in the approximate nose and tail points and then start massaging the middle down.  I probably only have .5'' worth of slack in there.  Crazy. 

hunter

Dang John, that chick model holding the board is hot (so is the board). I mean she’s old skool no doubt, but her arms are buff and her legs look like they’re 5 feet long. 

I know Tom Hanks likes riding logs, but he has NO BUSINESS in a shaping room with that saw. If he’s tight for coin with the economic downturn he should just do a sequel to that marooned on an island flick that everyone loved. I’d go see it.

…and all those rail contours cutouts look more like piano keys than surfboard stuff. 

Maybe the next board I do I will just freehand shape the entire thing not allowing myself even use of a template, rocker stick or even a pencil…

Hi deadshaper -

The plans are old school Popular Mechanics style all the way but it's a different company that published them.  They also printed rocker patterns with the plans.  I know you're gonna like this.... bottom AND deck!  Sorry, can't show you the rest of the deck curve... top secret and all that.

In all honesty, anyone who can follow directions and transfer patterns could likely make a decent old school longboard by following this set of plans. 

Here are some more featuring another one of the babes, deck line, rail templates and template in use...

 

 




Hunter - in MY world (backyard not pro) stagger cuts go like this:  Say I have a very thick blank (an old 7’7"A or windsurfer blank or whatever.)  The nose of the blank is maybe 2.5 inches thick… and I know that I eventually want the board’s nose to only be less than an inch.  So after skinning the blank & blocking it flat, maybe I still want to remove 1.25 inches or 2 inches of thickness from the nose, or in that neighborhood.  That’s a lot of foam and stringer, gotta get rid of it somehow?

One way to do that is with stagger cuts…ie., on the Botttom of the blank, first I run the planer along the stringer from 3 inches back of the nose, (let’s just say for example) a 1/8" deep cut all the way off the nose.  Then I step back, put the planer on the stringer 5 inches back and again do a 1/8" cut, all the way to the nose (in the same slot I just cut before).  So that slot cut is now 2 inches of 1/8" deep and 3 inches of 1/4" deep.   Then I back up, put the planer 7 inches back from the nose, and make a 3rd cut, same slot.  It’s now 1/8" deep from 7" to 5" back from the nose, 2/8" deep from 5" to 3" back, and 3/8" for the final 3 inches at the tip.  Fourth cut, maybe start a foot back, repeat the process as long as necessary…  You need to know ahead of time how thick you want the blank to end up, though!  and what shape & amount of bottom rocker you want. 

Depending how much foam is being removed, you may find that you’ll have to take down the foam on both sides of the slot before you finish it (and certainly afterward!  When & how you do that is up to you, but the power planer works well,  or a hand plane or sanding block if you’re nervous (or just need to work quietly because it is 3am).

And, you will want to run a full length cut to smooth out these “steps” into a nice curve/bottom rocker.

The exact numbers don’t matter, its just that you’re gradually bringing the nose of the board down toward its target thickness. get the picture?

Obviously what this does is rough out the bottom rocker at the same time.  The more flip you want in the nose, the deeper your stagger cuts will be.  If you’re making something flatter (longboard) then you might not do this, or you’d do much shallower, longer steps. 

That may be totally the opposite of what the pros do (or mean by this term) but it seems to work for me, particularly on big old thick chunks of foam where you have thickness that is 2 or 4 times as much as what you want to end up with.  Hopefully one of them will weigh in if I’ve told you something completely stupid.

I don't cut a ''slot'' (I work rail-to-center, then other rail-to-center). Motor housings on planers get in the way after a couple of cuts, if you cut a slot. Other than that, Keith described it almost perfectly. Stagger cuts would almost always run off an end of the blank. Roughing in big rocker additions is the purpose. Let's say you want to add 5/8'' of tail rocker at tip and 1/4'' at 12'' mark. With planer on 1/8'' cut, that's 5 cuts at tip and one at 12''. So you want one pass ~14'' long, one ~11'', one ~8'', one ~5'', and one ~2''.

There are two ways to sequence the cuts. You can do the short ones first, and each successive cut (sort of) blends the last. I'd rather do the long first and be able to see the pattern left after a set of cuts. It's a nice herringbone look, lol. IMO it's easier to check symmetry with the visible cuts. If you want to cut in V and tail rocker at the same time, just make the cuts on the rail longer than the ones on center. Clean-up passes and blocking (both with planer and sanding block) to finish.

This is also the way I'd take out twist; but you're only doing the cuts on one side and decreasing depth as you work across centerline. Don't forget to go to opposite side on deck and take that down to even up side-to-side thickness.

It's fun to talk about these old ''oversized blank'' shaping techniques, but I can live without having to do it on a daily basis. I don't really care for off-the-shelf blanks. Progress is good!

 

In the eighties there was a 7’7" sailboard blank, Bernie the accountant in Cocoa Beach was a big 'ol boy, so I shaped him a board from it. It required pulling the plan shape to the rear of the blank, knocking down the deck rocker at the tip, flattening the bottom through the apex of the bottom rocker.

Bernie loved it

 

Tommy Neison also had Bernie do books for him, so he built one for him too, used the rocker up to the tip, this put the apex of the rocker behind center, plus the plan shape was off in the tail, so I had to cheat the side fin placement, Bernie hated it, I took the heat for the fins being different from side to side, didn’t get paid for trying to fix anothers F-up. I could have let one fin box stick out of the rail I guess

Hey Jim, I blame you for this:

WRV was a distributor for Cark Foam. Using and selling many thousands of blanks. About every year, they'd send me down 10-20 blanks that were the dregs of the bunch (the stuff no one else would shape or buy - horrible twists, broken noses, etc. The rejects of the rejects). Their rationale I heard was that ''Mike knows how to use a planer, he can shape these''.

It's all your fault for showing me how. :-)

+1

Great info, Mike. I might never need to practice this stuff. I just tell Segway Ken the rocker profile, and it’s done for me already. Plus, it’s cheaper than buying a molded blank. Why wouldn’t any EPS shaper in the business use hot wired blanks?

 

I keep building 12’3" poly blanks for Skip and Josh, I use 2 - 11’3"s and get one 12 footer and one 10 footer, I have a primo profile for a 12 footer out of EPS, I get them wired to 3-1/4" to 3-3/8", no need for more meat than that, plus a finished board weighs 21-23 pounds, instead of 38 - 44

 

 

This is a 12 oh for a gent from Great Britian

SO... There is nothing quite like TRYING to rocker a flat blank to develop humility.  

Professionals and laypeople alike should be amused to learn that after about an hour of blowing foam all over the stinking place (including into my eyes) in 100 degree heat, I KARATE CHOPPED what was left of the STUPID BLANK in two!  Then I bashed those pieces into smaller pieces against my shaping stands --very cathartic.  I suppose I can use the remnants a target for my hunting bow.

Onward and upward.

That is all.

 

hunter

yes!!!that is awesome!

next one will be better…

" flattening the bottom through the apex of the bottom rocker."

jim or mike, would you mind explaining your way of doin it. i only did it once but was for me way more difficult than adding rocker.

 

thanks

uzzi

Hunter, Dave at G/R just got in a new shipment of Marko’s. I picked up a batch yesterday. BTW hope your family is doing well. Regards Dave D.

Flattening the center is a great example of where fade cuts are applicable. Start on zero, open up cut as you go through area to be flattened, then fade back to zero to finish cut. I would work from rail to center on one side, then match on other side. Successive sets of cuts may be of increasing length if you want to remove more than one cut (1/8") worth of rocker from center.

Hunter, I think just about every shaper has “lost it” on a blank. Major re-foiling projects are enough to drive anyone mad.

g-hopper...

you are buddies with my friend Pete V. no? 

Thanks for the encouragement.  As Mike put it... I fully lost it!  If I had not been covered in EPS, I would've gone inside and put the hitachi on c-list!

Now, for something constructive:  my big screw up was how flat I cut in the nose rocker.  I ended up with this long flat panel that I couldn't blend in.  Also, sometimes the planer does what I want it to, and other times it seems as if I have no control at all.  practice, practice.

hunter