They concentrate on a good business plan, and hide in the shallows.
i think the best boards are ones made by surfers who have worked into a design that they like to ride and are good at riding it … think Skip Frye with his gliders and on the opposite end of the spectrum daniel thompson on his little wakeboards. it is definately an advantage to be able to notice the subtleties in your own design changes.
obviously someone who doesnt surf and never even surfed can make good boards by copying designs if they are good with tools. same with someone who doesnt surf well or even does surf well. as kazuma says - hit the numbers and the board will work.
shapers who used to surf but no longer do still remember the feeling and in their own way are still surfing during the shaping process.
Beeing a good surfer is not the same thing of beeing a good shaper and vice versa.
Making a board requires a lot of craftman skills that not all of surfers has.
A good surfer/shaper can make good boards but that doesn’t mean other surfer will have same feedback of that board,
For exemple rob machado’s alaia, daaaamn I won’t be able to get any waves with that piece of wood maybe because I’m not a pro surfer and maybe because I don’t have same skills and style as machado. I’ve been snowboarding (snowboard instructor, instructor for new instructors, also competing) since I was 16 (now 35) and never bought a pro model snowboard. My idea is that, if a board was made for a specific rider, even if the dimensions are not the same, that board won’t work cause not the same riding style/height/weight/etc
now the question “can a non surfer sahper make good boards?” yes and no
My opinion
if he’s guided by a good surfer and follows surfer’s istruction - yes
if he knows a lot of physics and aerodynamics and fluid dynamics - who know’s, maybe the board can be rideable
if he has no fuc&!n idea about boards/surf/etc and just copies a board which he saw in a picture - 99% of the boards he’ll make will go str8 to the garbage.
…hello Colinglg; not exactly because most of the boards made by surfers outside shops or factories still can perform because they start with a close tolerance blank that have a right and proved rocker; then you have the STD fins; the same set up and position on the board; the same glass work; so no more trial and error for the clueless.
…Take a close tolorance blank, sand it with 40 grit, and glass it. Put some over the counter fins on it, and PRESTO, you’re a surfboard builder ! The thing will ride well within the acceptable range. Lots of examples of that skill level out there.
I think had I never surfed Id have been able to look at a surfboard and reproduce it very closely and with attention to deatail. Within a dozen boards I’d be spot on. I think some make this craft into something more mythical than it really is. The other thing being overlooked is the fact that how good a board is is entirely subjective. One of my all time favorite boards is one I was given by a friend who bought it and thought it was a complete dog. I rode that board to death.
One thing that always amazes me is how many good surfers I know who are completely clueless about surfboard design and shapes, many couldn’t even accurately describe their own boards.
Bill someone posted a video awhile back of a guy doing just that: glassed an unshaped blank and put fins on it and rode it, the video showed it being ridden and it performed just like a surfboard lol! I searched but couldn’t find it, someone out there knows how to find it tho.
…hello Mako224; nothing mythical but cost more than a dozen of boards to know in depth a labor. Whatever craft labor is the same.
Changing rockers; glueing stringers; adding different materials in the plastic process; the differences in the fins; the differences in the color work; and mainly and most difficult give the RIGHT prescription to the customer and then procedd to reproduce that with what you have.
All that stuff to do it REALLY right at 10 dan cost more than a dozen boards.
I can go to a surf shop and see different boards with each one with colors, pinlines, etc but I can discriminate perfectly well the quality and the “hand” and eye of the workers involved. Yes, all have the same features but are not the same; even gluing a stringer to a PS home board is somewhat easy however; with closer inspection I can see the not so well done work.
I checked the thread of hand made tools then you posted an interesting one, in the background I can see a colored board with a bad coloring work and that shade on a part of the stringer where the hand block or spoke let gauges…yes; color work; gloss, pinlines etc…
Hello Reverb,
Sorry to have burst your bubble a little bit. No reason to nitpic boards in the background of a picture as a backhanded way of saying I suck. Makes you seem like a petty dick. As for the board with the shaddow near the stringer, that is a pressure ding ya genious. I’ll be the first one to admit I struggle with color work. This thread is about shaping…not color work. I’m not an artist by any stretch and if you were talking about the orange looking board, that was the result of a tint that faded very badly to splotchy orange in the sun. It was a nice deep magenta/red when built but turned orange and splotchy from the sun almost immediately. The tint came from one of the popular on-line board building sites but clearly wasn’t a quality product or wasn’t compatible with epoxy even though the site claimed it was. Live and learn. It was also the very first resin tint I ever did. (let’s see your first) Just so you understand what you’re seeing in that picture here is what that color work looked like when it was new. Thank’s for making me regret posting a useful tool idea here. I’ll think twice in the future.
Board #4 after a 10 year break from making boards.
[Quote=thrailkill]Don’t overlook the everpresent, surfer that can’t surf. They’re everywhere ! They’ve ruined surfing.
[/quote]
Even worse, the “surf instructors” who cannot surf. There’s this one guy at my local who will take as many as six kids out to a point/reef break I frequent and park them all just inside of everyone else in the water. He gets $75/hr and he can’t even do a legit cutback. Plus, this is how he looks when he’s geared up to surf.
hey revererb, not exactly but sort of 
like I said, a board made, in this case, for a pro surfer will work for him and maybe, JUST maybe for few other surfers.
If u start changing volume, rocker, etc. even if the outline/channels/etc. is the same, u completly change the inicial board .
maybe the non surfer shapers are innate surf shapers LOL
Its just working with your hands and tools and having an eye for it. Its not rocket science and it isn’t zen buddist malarchy.
PS: Its 98% the rider anyway.
…not referring to a dent; put again the picture; that s not a dent. but never mind, continue with your arrogant thought about that with a few boards you can DESIGN and build a great board like the masters. I work in this industry as a daily job for near 30 years and I am not a master; also I see clearly how long I am to mastering some steps; for example: designing (to make prescriptions confident to the customers world wide) full guns (yes; I can build it but in the end I am not so sure about the right prescription…may be nobody is; I do not know) Tint work and channels; vacuum bagging some materials (without cosmetic issues) etc
–you are right that a great % is on the rider side (psyche)
Better yet here is a fresh close up so you can see exactly what you mistook from a distance in a photograph for poor workmanship. You can appologize anytime you like or you can press onward…
Sorry it took you 30 years to learn how to work with your hands. Not everyone shares your affliction.
So I spent years learning to make clean boards.
I was living in Hawaii and a south swell was coming. I needed a board…quick
Went in to friends factory and got a piece of shit reject blank. I did a midnight power shape job and it twisted’
I glassed it and it twisted even more. I was going to stomp it but I went ahead a put a fin on and rode this damn ugly azz board. Laughter in the parking lot. Twisted like a propellor. It was the best board I ever had. Other’s rode it and agreed.
SO what is a good shape?
Bingo. Like I said earlier, its subjective. What works for you might not work for me and vise versa.
…I am talking about design plus top quality work; you cannot do a fine prescription to a customer if you only built few boards.
Then you put whatever picture NOT the one that you posted before; where s the color on the board; magically dissapeared?
Anyway; seems that you are one of these guys that paint a car with a brush and think that are in the same league or better than a guy that spent hours to perform the best job possible with that body work and paint…but if its only a car…we are trash it, rush it, crash it; why all the hassle?