Hulls: Shaping and Design

Airboy’s posted a pretty comprehensive bibliography…I’ve been involved with these board for a lot of years and I’ve shaped a few variations. Here’s my advice. If you are a novice or you’ve shaped a couple hundred boards, you have to have one in front of you to see all the subtleties. No amount of descriptions or pictures are gonna do them justice.

One key is the right blank…contact this guy and you can order up a nice one; Marty@foamcorpsurf.com. They have to have the right rocker (flat) and thickness (3.5 inches+).

cflsurf93 · November 30, 2011, 11:55pm

Thanks heaps airboy and leev!!! I’m gunna have to find me one of these hulls to run my hands over for sure. I am new to shaping and all that so I will definately take what you said and use it!!

MikeDaniel · December 1, 2011, 12:53am

If you don't have a lot of experience a proper hull is going to be very difficult. For your first few boards you're going to be ''following the blank'', and a hull is anything but that. There just aren't any off-the-shelf blanks that will get you close. A thorough understanding of how rail bands work is also required.

If you can lay your hands on a few boards it'll help to let you see the challenge, there's a LOT of foam to be removed to get to hull-land.

DrStrange · December 1, 2011, 11:20pm

I tried shaping one a few years ago, my 3rd shape I think. You could tell it was an attempt and that’s about as close as I got. One thing I learned though that will help a lot, Mike’s post made me think of it, use EPS/epoxy and hot wire the rocker. That way (once you learn what about hull rocker etc) you can “shape” it in masonite and then get your cut in pretty close ball park to the finished product. That is of course if you get a nice, clean hot wire cut… Masonite is cheap and you can put the two side templates together and futz with the curve until you either get it right or throw it away and start over and not have lost much money but gained a lot of brain to eye to hand practice.

cflsurf93 · December 2, 2011, 12:21am

Right on!! My friends just made a hot wire so that wont be a problem, I guess the only issue I have are finding a hull that I can run my hands over and really feel the subtleties of the design. Also, I probably wont use a EPS blank, im not really a fan of how they fell under my feet. Unless theres an EPS out there that feels like a PU.

DrStrange · December 2, 2011, 12:53am

Not certain but I think you can only hot wire EPS

MikeDaniel · December 2, 2011, 1:15am

DON'T try to hotwire PU. Extremely poisonous fumes/smoke, fire potential, and general disaster will result. The stringer is already in the blank (usually), so you couldn't do a profile cut anyway.

Hot wire is ideal for polystyrene foams, expanded or extruded. It's done before the stringer (of course, I think stringers are a relic from the last century lol)

cflsurf93 · December 2, 2011, 6:00am

Yeah i thought that was the case. Thats why I will go ahead and use a PU blank and go about the “old fashion” way haha. That is unless you know of any EPS blanks that have a similar feel to PUs and flex like them…

Ultimats · December 2, 2011, 9:32am

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(of course, I think stringers are a relic from the last century lol)

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SO many things are changing with design and construction, maybe single piece boards and hand shaping are "last century" too. Wonder what we'll be shaping in ten years ?