newbie shaping question - concerned with rocker.

Short history - I bought a blank, thought I could have some fun with sandpaper and a mask. Had so much fun, and was stoked with my work, I now have proper halogen lights, tons of various grit sand paper, and level shaping racks.

My question. Im very concerned with getting a rocker I like. Someone gave me a planer to borrow while hes in hawaii. Its a porter cable, brand new. I noticed when I was planing the deck(first mistake?) the planer doesn’t hit the surface near the nose. To get correct rocker from a shaped blank, do you touch the stringer on the top of the deck and just work with the bottom stringer for rocker. Im new to this please be gentle. Im having a blast, its cold as hell in NY during the winter.

bottom for rocker, skim the deck

HALOGEN?

Try to keep your planer work to the basics. For your first time use it to take away foam. Use a sanding block, sureform etc for shaping and blending, The more your use your planer you can do more things with it.

Since this is your first one. use the rocker that your blank has. Someone designed that rocker for a reason, they can be good,decent or horrible baseline for the rocker you want.

Thanks for the replys. I have been reading this forum for about 2 years now! I had to take quite a bit off of the deck because of a botched ‘glue up’. But I now have a shapeable blank. This will be the last blank I order w/o a stringer for a while, to much work. Almost posted another newbie question, but found my answer via the search function - in the process of building a homemade caliper with a jig saw. Just waiting on a old quad thats going to serve as the template for my next project. I’m afraid my number one has become to small and thin for me to ride, but served as alot of practice and I learned alot. Going to glass it and give it to a grom, or have it professionally glassed and make it a wall hanger. So its on to #2 - 5’10 diamond tail quad, well thats the plan, we will see what happens - thanks again!