OK, I now have some pics of where I am now, and so I continue…
I bought the following equipment:
1. A Ryobi electric planer. It has a big cut depth adjustment knob, which is infinitely variable between 0 and 2mm. When I tried to skim the top of the blank, I discovered that the front shoe is too long for doing the front of the deck of a shortboard - it doesn’t fit into the concave, even when positioned at a large angle to the stringer. I’ll have to sand/surform the front of the deck.
2. Wooden trestles. I know these aren’t the best racks, but they’ll do for right now. They’re easily stored.
3. Hand plane.
4. Surform.
5. Various gauges.
6. Dust mask.
7. Safety goggles. I first got open sided safety glasses, but soon found that they were no good. The foam dust flies around the side, and slashing at a blank with your eyes closed cause you have foam particles imbedded in your eyeball sockets must be the fastest way to trash a blank!
I’ve probably left some things out, but that’s basically it.
I printed the template from AKUshaper. You obviously have to put several sheets of paper together, and there aren’t clear marks for aligning them. I did the best I could, lining up the edges of the pages with the edge of a floorboard to keep it straight.
(Incidentally, I printed another template from Shape3D, and it printed with guidelines indicating measurements along the length. This is very helpful when trying to assemble a template from multiple pages. However, that was a longboard where the width went off the edge of an A4 page. For some reason, the tail printed beautifully until the outline went off the page, but then the outline for the front never reappeared. I haven’t figured it out. Anyway, I’m working on a Mac at home, and Shape3D seems to be PC only.)
I then traced the outline onto the bottom of the blank. I drew the template onto the bottom, 'cause its flat across the board, and also because I figured that accuracy on the bottom is more critical than on the deck. With a down-railed board, the apex of the rail is closer to the bottom, hence if you saw a little bit skew it’s going to have less effect.
I cut the blank with a fairly big cross-cut saw, a bit off my outline. I found it difficult to follow the outline. I then cut almost exactly on the outline with a smaller hand saw. I think I was fairly accurate, and I only touched up a few spots with the surform. The bottom edge of the outline cut is better than the deck edge; there are a couple of spots where my cut was a little off vertical.
When you see the blank cut with the outline, you see the flaws - there’s a bit of a flat spot in the middle third of my outline, and the curve comes in a little suddenly about a third off the tail. However, I’m reluctant to smooth the curve by taking off width. (Balsa already suggested that I could have gone wider than I did, and I’m very well aware that you can’t put it back!)
Then I cracked out the planer… I started on the bottom, cautiously with a very small cut depth. Too small actually, and I’ve got a bit of thickness to take off. At that stage, I made grooves in the blank deeper than my cuts by carelessly dragging the back corners of the planer over the blank. So I increased the cut depth to the max - 2mm. I tried to angle the planer, and work with the shoe over the uncut surface, as I’ve seen here on Swaylocks. I had patches where I got it right, but for the most part it was harder going than I expected. I then turned the blank over to skim the deck, and ended up with problems on the forward end, as described above. All in all, I’ve skimmed a little off the top and bottom, but not very evenly. I’ve now got to figure out how to even it up and remove the little bit of twist I’ve put in. Fortunately I haven’t gone too far, and I’ve got a little thickness to play with as my “learning space”.
This is the present state of affairs:
[img_assist|nid=1030461|title=BottomNose|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=75]
[img_assist|nid=1030461|title=BottomNose|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]
[img_assist|nid=1030462|title=BottomTail|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480][img_assist|nid=1030463|title=Deck Nose|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=100|height=75][img_assist|nid=1030463|title=Deck Nose|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480][img_assist|nid=1030464|title=Side|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480][img_assist|nid=1030465|title=Ryobi planer|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]