So I am trying to see if anyone has any articles or videos for how to get that nice domed shape on the deck of a board?
When shaping, I feel that I can reasonably:
Set my bottom rocker
Set the basic shape of the deck, in terms of thickness along the rocker (foiling?)
What I am missing from there is, do I just move directly to shaping the rails? Should the rail shaping process produce a domed deck? Should I be roughly shaping a slight dome into it first, then drawing my rail lines? Just seems like my first few boards are coming out with a very flat deck where I would like it to have a more modern dome shape to it.
Any articles or videos that have an explanation would be helpful. Been watching a lot of shaping videos on youtube but some seem to gloss over a lot of steps or just not explain at all why/what they’re doing at any given time.
Once the rail bands are done, you smooth it all out, and it should end up slightly domed.
I made a bow-like sanding tool that stretches a piece of belt sander media tought. Like a super sized flexible sander tool that you can buy. It’s wide enough to go completely across the board and make the smoothest rounded off deck. I can use just part of it to keep the deck slightly flat with a nice rounded off deck/rail transition.
You can also just use your arms and stretch the belt sander media, but the tool makes it easier. I do it both ways, for just the rails, I may only hand hold the sanding media.
For shaping I use a variety of grits, but the course stuff works fastest.
I have many 2x4 sanding blocks with belt sander media stapled to it. One side may be extra course and the other finer, or I put a curve in the wood and use it for making concaves. I have up to 36" long blocks, and I’ve made smaller blocks with lots of curve for double concave bottoms. The extra course grits make hand sanding of a glassed board faster.
The deck roll gets shaped before the rails.
The first decision is to decide how much deck roll you want.
In this example, which is the deck roll for a mal, I have 26mm (1’') which is quite alot, whereas on the last mid length I made I went for 19mm.
Note the deck roll is measured out to the cut lap and the distance from the cut lap to the rail edge is 35mm.
First step is to draw the curve on a piece of paper at full scale.
Then divide the distance of the stringer out to the cut lap by 5, then measure the distances down from a straight line.
In my example
1/5 out 2mm.
2/5 out 5mm
3/5 out 10mm
4/5 out 17mm
5/5 out (cutlap) 26mm
The way to mark it out, is to draw 90 degree lines out from the stringer on the deck every 150mm (6’').
Then measure the width out to the rail edge and subtract the rail width 35mm.
Measure 35mm in from the rails around the board and draw this cut lap line.
Next step divide the distance between the stringer and cut lap by 5 and mark.
Repeat this every 6’’ along the deck, then join these nose to tail lines.
Also draw a guide line along the rail face, your full scale cross section drawing will tell you this number.
Once you have all these guidelines you can draw up the bevel lines on your drawing and work out a shaping plan of attack.
I want to emphasize shark country’s comment, “…and it should end up slightly domed.” Too much dome, from my experience, can be painful on the ribs.
To be clear, I’m making wakesurf boards so I don’t have the issues with rib pain (I’ve been there though I totally agree). But also, wakesurf boards are fairly thin so there’s not that much dome I can’t really put in it anyway. I just don’t want it completely flat.
A domed, flat or concave deck is all personal preference. But, if you want a thick board and a nice narrow rail, it will end up with a domed deck, or an s-rail. I’ve done a couple s-rails, but I believe they disturb the water flow. Same for the love handles, so I stopped doing them.
I start with a lines along the rail and deck. I know I want my rail a certain thickness so I have a line to mark that, then I have at least one line on the deck where I will want the deck to be reasonably flat, maybe 3 or 4 inches in, depends on the thickness of the board. Then I start cutting rail bands leaving the rounding off to the end.
Also, the rails are done after the blank is foiled from nose to tail. I don’t worry about the rounding off of the deck until the rails are cut, but the foiling of the board from nose to tail is done before I address the rails.
I am a strong proponent of tucked under rails with an obvious hard edge, but I am also changing (learning?) and I now make the rail in the middle of the board softer than I was doing before. Hard edges are fast, but the softer rail makes turning easier, so I do hard up front to softer in the middle and then hard edge from the back third for my mid-lengths and longer boards. With short boards I don’t have the hard edge in the nose.
FYI… I have never ridden a wakeboard, so I can’t say how much difference the shape would be. I assume they are short and narrower. Why domed deck if the board is thin?
I found that a slight concave under my feet make pushing down so much easier. All personal preference.
I don’t mean that I want to create a balloon of a dome on my board, but a slight dome shape would be nice rather than just having it be flat as a board on the top.
