loaded question of the year(not about drugs)

General Discussion
1

okay this one a cracker

to the pro and experienced shapers

At some stage in your career you may have reached a point and said to yourself, wow ive just made a really great board. Ive heard that some guys have made thousands of boards(in fact its been used as trump card many times in design disscussions). So somewhere along the line you felt you nailed it.

my question is, what number were you up to when your felt you made a great board?

okay im not talking glassing and sanding, which are almost a trade in there own right!

just as a shaper

more questions to come based on honest responses!

enjoy :slight_smile:

2

There is a caviat to your question.

That is, its easier to make a great board for yourself, but its quite another to make great boards for many different surfers with many different styles and many different requirements.

Ive made less than 30, but Ive got a couple majic ones, and several good ones. But depending on conditions, they are sometimes majic, sometimes not. Ive made 2 or 3 duds, all of those were very stiff.

Turning a designed ‘dud’ into a majic one was one of the most rewarding things Ive done. So I dont think Im imagining things…it evolved over time and included lots of fin and edge experiments.

My best ones involved tweaks after test rides, but I would say the great ones came in the teens somewhere.

I know, shocking isnt it?!

3

Forgot to thanks Swaylocks for the accelerated learning curve.

4
Quote:

okay this one a cracker

to the pro and experienced shapers

At some stage in your career you may have reached a point and said to yourself, wow ive just made a really great board. Ive heard that some guys have made thousands of boards(in fact its been used as trump card many times in design disscussions). So somewhere along the line you felt you nailed it.

my question is, what number were you up to when your felt you made a great board?

okay im not talking glassing and sanding, which are almost a trade in there own right!

just as a shaper

more questions to come based on honest responses!

enjoy :slight_smile:

Like the old oil tychoon used to say: Some people find oil …others don’t.

Some shapers have it from the start, others take awile and some never get it. I know guys that have been shaping 20 years and never improved.

5

Key phrase in there is "what # were you up to when you up to when YOU FELT you made a great board’’ (my caps).

Looking back after 37 years of shaping, my answer is not the same as it would have been when I was 20 or 25 or 35 years old.

I was lucky enough to have guys winning contests on my boards before I’d shaped a hundred, but if I saw those boards today I’d puke.

Experience, if you’re concientious, makes you better and better and better. This is true in almost any job.

A surfboard is a complex set of curves that must all fit together to get a "great’’ board. It takes a long time to develop the ‘‘shaper’s eye’’

necessary to even see the subtleties that seperate the great boards from the good ones. And not everybody needs a great board, or even

a good one. You can go out and have fun on some crude equipment, and having fun is what it’s all about.

But once you get to a certain level, you need at least good equipment to advance further.

When I started, it was all big oversized blanks and you really had to learn to use a planer and create fair lines on your own. Close tolerance

blanks were decades away. I designed one of the first close tolerance plugs for Clark, and I had friends tell me I was making it ‘‘too easy’’

for less experienced shapers. That blank and the others that followed did make it easier to shape, but I still don’t think that was a bad thing.

Your compsand techniques take it one step further; when you vac on sheet foam or veneer it fairs a lot of things for you, which again I don’t

think is a bad thing. CAD techniques accelerate the learning curve somewhat, but there should be a law that you can’t have anything cut on a machine until you’ve shaped 10,000 by hand. (IMO, don’t yell at me).

6

001

7

The day that you think you nailed it is when the board you are very satisfied with gets taken the the CAD programer, it gets probed for duplication on a production scale with the ability to tweak it up to 15% any dimension. You call the foam manufacturer have a plug made for your cnc milling master. You keep production locally and if you go overseas you do it in Hawaii or California where the surfers are. Then you still are not satisfied and make the next new and improved model.

Why, do you want to go in business???

8

thats right mike :slight_smile:

you managed to answer the question i asked

i knew you would

what # were you up to when you up to when YOU FELT you made a great board?

hard question, thanks for answering honestly

i guess its fair to say that “you felt at the time” as boards have obviously evolved since you started out bro

otay you didnt answer the question asked

besides it was directed to pro shapers

not members of there entourage :smiley:

so mike daniel, a respected and experienced shaper felt that he had made some great boards (under the current evolution at the time) somewhere in his first hunderd

anyone else wanna step up

ken your board is beautiful btw

9

I’m going to guess when it all starts going right the first time. However many, or few that is. For me, no. 2 was a really nice board. Then the question was where do I go from here which probably shows my lack of experience.

10

I did answer your question. When one has it “nailed” and you are willing to put it on the line to the masses. Feed back on a board from one mate can neither go to your head if it is a good report or get you down if they don’t like it.

Having a quality stock board to make when the custom orders are down is how you make a living at this. Scrutiny from 100’s or even thousands of surfers on your “nailed” board will speak for itself with continued purchases.

The best shapers I know can do it from a block of foam with no stringer. Efficiency is very low but they are truly talented shapers. I like to use tools, wire cutters, electric planers. Hot shapers careers are fickled and look like a tide chart with low tide lasting for years sometimes.

For you to be even asking the question is laughable. If it is 5 boards or 5,000, who cares. But if you are shaping hundreds of boards per year, obviously someone is buying them. I have never even considered quantifying what you ask. But I do know a shaper’s going rate is very low with low experience. What’s your rate per shape Silly???

11

Paul,

A lot of guys I speak to admit that their very earliest shapes held their surfing back. From the age 13 to 16 before working in a “real” board factory, mine were a bit…amateurish…though I’ll claim:- Ahead of their time!

LOL

With a great boss and teacher in Gavin Carrol of “Mocean” surfboards in Lorne, Victoria, from then til about age 21, I started to nail it regularly, though painfully, nonetheleast because I loved six channels!

Getting an education meant virtually duplicating Gavs shapes rather than going for my keen Grommy extremes.

This is a key…spend a lot of time taking notes. It does’nt mean you need to slog out a lifetime in another guys shadow, but passing through every other aspect of board production trains your eye and hand.

A long road and a few shocking duds, particularly in the banana rocker era, now I count amongst my mentors a list of droppable names, and a bunch of others who inadvertently steered me in a better direction.

There’s another key…at a point its time to have confidence in your own experience. I mean, there’s no superhuman shaping Gurus and there is no formula.

Josh

12

i was thinking of how to word my answer as i read your question. as i scrolled down and saw mike daniels answered as i felt. i didnt get to make any plugs for blanks but i did start out with fairly thick blanks with little or no roll in the decks. (as well as about 4 f#$%ed up profiles given to me to try and make something of) by my first hundred boards i thought i was killing it… i had had front cover shots of guys on my boards & several wqs/wct guys trying(to ride… sic pun intended) my boards. by 150 boards i had a 3 stores stocking them. i wish i knew then what i know now… and im sure that im going to wish what i know in the future was with me now!

i had an advantage over many as i was working in a board factory, & seeing 100 boards a week going thru… i knew what a good shape should look like.

the more i did/do now the more i realize i dont know. im scared of getting older and forgetting things i should know…

i remember murray burton telling me i wont understand rails properly until i had done a 1000. so now i have taken on something my father showed me on a steam engine from the 1800’s GOOD BETTER BEST, NEVER LET IT REST, UNTIL YOUR GOOD IS BETTER AND YOUR BETTERS BEST!

13

otay, the answer you gave is not for the question i asked

the question relates to an individuals opinion of oneself and how they regard there own handiwork and ability.

and as dave and josh point out, a perfectionist is there own worse critic:)

your answer relates to your opinion of how you regard “other peoples handiwork and ability”

if you are not a shaper(as this question was directed to “shapers with experience”)

its a bit like a food critic who cant cook;)

so after 2 years on swaylocks,are you indeed a “shaper with experience”

and if you are

what # were you up to when you up to when YOU FELT you made a great board

14

First… if you want to talk to the pros, post on the Industry page… we’re mostly just hacks here, brother.

Second… I’m no pro, but I teach a board-building course at a local community college and I get the same question a lot. How many boards… How many years…until you build a really great board?

My answer is always the same: Every board rides. You might have to change your style to match the board, but every board rides… even your very first Frankenstein creation. But it takes a long, long time and a lot of Frankensteins before you build a board that rides like you expected it to.[/i]

When you start doing that consistently, you’ve devleloped that “shaper’s eye” and have a solid understanding of design elements and how they are interrelated.

15

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while.

I found a nut on my tenth board, it’s still a go-to shape in my quiver. But I didn’t shape it and then say, “Self, you just shaped a great board”. I had to ride it first, then I discovered it was magic. I think that’s what you were asking, right? When did you know a board was good after just shaping it?

My answer on that would be… Later.

16

what # were you up to when you up to when YOU FELT you made a great board

THAT is the question.

Thinking about it, considering that as recent as one year ago I was a pretty decent surfer, it has been a mind opening experience feeling all the boards Ive made. The feeling/results were immediate on the first couple rides…if the conditions were right, I could tell right away, first couple of rides, good, not so good or sucks.

Thinking further, I made a really great board, my first cored deck skin board, which I believe was my 7th or 8th. I didnt vac bag and there were some mistaken loose spots that made the board flex so sweet. There was something about the bottom too, it seemed to absorb vibration so the board felt like riding on a cushion of air, VERY smooth…and it was rippable yet very forgiving. I still have the board but its hideous looking and now sits in my attic as a nostalgic piece, pics attached.

Not sure why Otay consistently brings up big business on a DIY forum. I dont agree that the mass market has to approve of standard shapes…banana rockers were wildy mass popular 15 or so years ago and those designs suck for most people. With enough marketing/advertising monies you can get people to buy dessicated freeze-dried dog poo. Generally speaking, big business is good for the economy but its not everyone’s cup of tea, particularly in this forum. Go BIG has different meanings for different people…Otay gets my vote as the Donald Trump of Swaylocks.

But its okay, free speech and dissent is healthy…makes people think…just no hitting below the belt please.

17

were doing good dave

we got three pros answers allready

i thought this one was gunna die straight away

ahh remember i said to leave out the glassing sanding part

we are talking shapes here lads

so i guess material advantages dont count either

18

Sorry man…well I guess Im biased cuz I feel shaping is the easiest part. As you know, you can spend extra time on the shape only to have the glassing alter it. Bottom edges have to be just right!

But carry on…

Hey where’s Barnfield? I bet he’s too old to remember…HA!

(joking!)

19

Not sure why Otay consistently brings up big business on a DIY forum. I dont agree that the mass market has to approve of standard shapes…banana rockers were wildy mass popular 15 or so years ago and those designs suck for most people. With enough marketing/advertising monies you can get people to buy dessicated freeze-dried dog poo. Generally speaking, big business is good for the economy but its not everyone’s cup of tea, particularly in this forum. Go BIG has different meanings for different people…Otay gets my vote as the Donald Trump of Swaylocks.

I only speak from my personal experience. That’s not big business. I started out just like you all except for no swaylocks. resin research, eps blank manufacturers, FCS, probox, additive f. Personally I thought my very first board was the tits. Kind of got to have that attitude sometimes. But as ferel dave points out thinking you know it all only proves you are stupid. Good shapes come from experience and experience comes from bad shapes.

Even Silly has taught me a thing or two. Like who needs a shop to make a mess in when the living room will just do fine.

I resent the Donald Trump remark. I put my pants on with assistance from my man servant just like the rest of you. If you don’t believe me ask my maid or butler.

otay

20

…in my opinion, shaping is the most difficult part

very difficult (and sometimes elusive) to obtain such a bunch of curves in different platforms for so different biotypes and waves and that ALL want to work at its best

very stressing (sometimes frustrating) because you can have a competitor, a rookie, a collector, a surf shop, etc

all types of surfers, shops and criteria depends on those curves