you guys have a special tricks to make rocker templates? i have a board that i would like to copy. should i take a picture and work it on illustrator or there is a easier way?
i would likle to hotwire a eps block.
thanks
Make 2 out of masonite (or one masonite and your pre-shaped stringer, if you’re going to use one). Drill 3 holes in them - 6" from each end & one in the middle. Use 16d framing nails pushed through the holes and into your foam to hold the guides steady and run your wire right along.
Extra credit: cut the bottom first and then shape in your concaves, vee, channels, etc. before even cutting the deck. First, leaving it thick helps stop the EPS from flexing as you shape the details; second, if you go too deep or screw something up, you can bump up your wire guides and make a fresh bottom cut & try again.
Hey Louis, its Carl.
put a piece of template board against the wall and put your surfboard on a stand as close as possible with side profile against the board.
get a piece of hollow steele pipe with a inside diameter that is just big enough to hold a pencil.
slide and tape a pencil in the end of the pipe and run the pipe carefully along the bottom of the surfboard so that the pencil duplicates the bottom curve of the surfboard on the sheet against the wall. Make sure you get the tail and tip marked off for the proper length.
Now all you have to do is measure the thickness of the surfboard every 6" and make a mark on the template board measuring from your trace line making sure the marks are every 6" too.
Join the dots to form the line that is now your deck profile.
Smooth the deck line using a long ruler.
Now you have the actual profile.
Cut this out and make two out of them. One for each side of your EPS Block. Hot wire cut and Voilà.
thanks, bro!!
by the way i have tryed to remove the tap from the 55g…
doesnt work, will have to grind the shit out of it!
Addictions in epoxy and eps…mmmmm…can’t wait to see those! Plasti-Fab (who supplies HD here in Canada) makes a variety of grades of EPS; you could definitely get a full, seamless and square (ie; no wobbles) block from them for pretty cheap (www.plastifab.com). Probably even ship it to Victoria when they send a load over from Richmond to the Island HD’s. Keep us posted Louis; I’m VERY interested. You’ll like how clean the blanks come out; no deck skinning or anything like that; rockers, outline, railbands, 'caves/v, sand, fill/seal and glass.
As an aside; do yourself a favour and make your off-cuts kind of thick. This will give you a rocker and deck bed for when you want to start vacuum bagging stuff…which will probably happen soon.
Another way to get rocker templates. Buy a urethane blank. Cut it lengthwise along the stringer. Set it down and trace the two templates on a piece of masonite. Mix up some epoxy and glue it back together.
Nice thing about rocker templates, they work just like outline templates. Once you have a few with different curves it’s real easy to use those curves to create new board designs with totally different rockers and thicknesses. Takes about 20 minutes to make a set of templates. Any new design you can think of, that requires a new blank, you can make for yourself in a about an hour. Ready to be shaped the next day.
Total freedom in design.
lay the board on your racks bottom up, put on your rubber gloves and tell your board to cough…kidding.
SurfbaBottom up, lay a piece of 1/2 to 3/4 inch plywood on it’s edge (12" by the length of your board…+ 4 inches, ie. 7’0" for a 6’6" board). Take a pair of drafting dividers that have a pencil on one point, adjust the dividers for the greatest daylight distance between the board and wood (+ 1/2); this should most likely be at the nose rocker. Trace the template by riding the non-pencil side of the dividers along the bottom of the surfboard and the pencil side on the plywood. Cut out with a jig-saw, sand smooth.
For a hot wire rig or a profiler, nail two of those plywood pieces together, trace, cut and sand smooth, remove nails. You have two identical pieces.
PS. I feel the Swaylocks shirt on my back already.
From Hollowsurfboards.com - How To:
The rocker template is created by laying the board to be copied on a flat surface, top up… You’ll need to be able to look under the board so having the board on the floor won’t work…A flat work table is needed…At least as long as the board...
Make sure the fin(s) don’t contact the flat surface…Get a piece of template material (1/8” x 6” x board length plus a couple inches) and measure the length of the board and put that length on the rocker template...Next make perpendicular pencil marks on the template, measuring from each end at 12” increments…These will represent where the cross ribs will be…I identify each of the ribs with a name – N-12 would be the rib that is 12" from the nose…T-36 is the rib that is 36” from the tail…It helps to keep the parts separated… They will look similar so it helps to keep things simple…
Next go to the reference surfboard, and make the same 12” from each end measurements on the flat surface the board is on… Use a square to locate the nose and tail…I sometimes use a long piece of masking tape to put the marks on…Write on the tape the rib names (T-12 …N-24, etc.)… Next, holding a ruler look under the board and measure the bottom rocker of the reference board at each of the 12” marks…Write them down…Be as accurate as possible…
Transfer those numbers to your rocker template…Measuring and marking carefully…Next connect those dots with a flexible strip of 1/8” plywood…Smooth is important…Take your time to get it the way it needs to be…
Next, with calipers measure the thickness of the reference board at the 12” intervals…Write them down…Before you transfer those numbers to the rocker template, you’ll need to subtract the thickness of the top and bottom skins that the hollow board will have…Remember right now you’re making an interior part…You’ve just measured an exterior surface…There’s a difference…. I usually figure the deck and bottoms to be each 3/16” thick…Combined that’s 3/8”…So if you subtract 3/8” from your reference board thickness measurements, you’ll have the measurement of the hollow boards stringer…Now you can transfer those numbers to the rocker template…Again you can connect the dots…Mark the nose and tail with perpendicular marks to the straight template edge...This is important...Looks good…???...If not take the time to smooth out the lines…
I use a neat trick, but it requires some tools…
I put the board on stands upside down and pencil mark the center point. Shim one end or the other until the center point is at the highest place above the floor. Set up a laser level at the same height as the highest point of the board’s underside. You can then use a tape measure every 6-12" to figure out the board’s rocker measurements to the laser line.
In the photo, I’m measuring a spot about 2’ forward of center where the rocker is about 1.25" off the laser. The red line is hard to see in the photo, but if you look closely at the wood tape stands, its there…
I second that Benny, I set the board upside down so it is level side to side and approx nose to tail, mark the stringer wherever I want to measure, every 6" and every 3" on nose and tail, set the laser level up meausure from the board up to the laser line, bingo!
Mark
How do you fit a ruler between the table and the board? I don’t see this working. The laser level seems like a great idea, but many people don’t have a laser level. The best way is to trace a template from a boards whos rocker you are replicating.
Laser Level…!!!..
Simply brilliant…
In the future, that’s how I’m doing it…!!!..
Thanks for sharing…
Paul
Quote:
The laser level seems like a great idea, but many people don't have a laser level.
Well, you should! (Said with a smile - the internet is not good on irony 
)
Laser levels are around $30 now. Nice to use for hanging art straight on the walls too…or, ya know, building stuff.
Blades description is the best way to accurately copy a rocker profile from a board. Tried and true if you don’t move your plywood and you must keep the scribing tool at the same angle the whole time. I would rig a flat base (for running along the bottom of your board) to whatever contraption you’re scribing with to help keep the tool angle the same during scribing.
gman
I copy rockers in a way that I think is very exact, fast and easy using a "bramwheel".
I only have these two picures of me doing this but I think you'll get the idea.
This is what you need:
A good board to copy rocker from.
Some suitable material to copy the rocker to - thin plywood, masonite or in this case cardboard and a bramwheel.
Lay down your cardboard sheet on the floor and have the board standing up on it's rail. Make a sloppy copy of the rocker and cut it out. This does not have to be exact and if it's a little bit uneven or a wavy line doessent matter. The next step is where it all happens and this is what you can see in the pictures.
I use an exact black marker that draws out a thin and well defined line. The bramwheel in this case was a lid from a camping stove coffe kettle with the knob removed. This worked great but anything else that's perfectly round and has a small hole in the centre to put your pencil through should work.
Next step it's god to hav a friend to help hold the board against a bech where the ruff cut cardboard lies at 90 degres agains the stringer. Take the bramwheel and go once from tip to tail holding the pencil straight up all the time. The wheel rolls against the stringer and follows every little detail.
You now have a clean exact line copying the rocker.
This is a very good way to copy shapes and draw out offsets. It has it's limitations though. It works perfect with surfboard rockers that are only curved one way. To make a copy of a S shaped curve however this method does not work since the offset line will always be in a direction 90 degrees out from where the wheel touches the original shape.
