I have a friend that brought a 8’ balsa blank back from Ecuador. How much should I charge him to shape it? He doesn’t want it chambered or a stringer put in it. It is just going to be a wall hanger. Mahalo
I think its 3 to 5 times as much work to shape balsa as compared to foam. Maybe more for a wall hanger, since you’ll want it to look perfect. But if its a friend, maybe you shouldn’t charge anything. Or charge your normal price instead of 3x or 5x…
You can get it done for cheap, but as they say, “stupid is as stupid does”. I start off at 250.00 and go up from there. A potential client came to me the other day with his balsa blank and wanted a price, I told him 350.00, he’s getting bandsaw thumb boy to do it for 150.00, you get what you pay for.
OK how much would the seniority balsa masters charge? just for relativity’s sake?..Dale Velzy,Greg Noll,Pat Curran ,Postumus Diff,Retired Phil Edwards…a grand ,1500.00…ambrose in support of the craft…
$250 to start is a friggin’ deal. Why would someone quibble over the most important part of the process? I hope the knuckle dragger doesn’t ruin the poor saps board. I bet the cheap faucker does an opaque color job on the thing. Speaking of color I do have some kinda weird lust for the tints that DT is doing on some of his balsas. 
The Dutch Masters, Noll, Curren, Velzy all start off well over 3 grand. A quick thousand to buy the materials and build the blank, but you say, “the wood only costs four hundred?”. Milling and matching wood, sawing it to rocker, splitting wood and milling for stringers, then gluing it all together. What was that figure for time in the machines, $80.00 per hour? After that it is only a matter of cleaning the raw blank up, top and bottom, some pre foiling, drawing an outline and cleaning that up. (this always takes a hellah’ lot longer that one can imagine) I can shape a wood board in one session, but the fatigue/ frustration level is unimaginible. Greg Noll showed me one of his master pieces, he said he had 48 hours in the sanding alone. Now add a classic wood fin and a glass job, $350.00-$500.00. So in my scheme of things, I think for those gents, a thousand for the shape and some cash in the retirement pocket. Pat Curren builds about 10 of his wooden beauties a year, Geg Noll does about the same, Velzy does build more, around 20 wood boards a year. $40,000 doesn’t go real far these days. As Duke Boyd says, “for the love of surfing”