It is cold but so very worth it to surf in NJ. Wetsuits have come a long way and we actually starting to get crowds when everyone is home for the holidays. I saw you guys planing across the board. While that is fine for getting the blank close to thickness be VERY careful doing that when it gets close to the final rocker, you may wind up with bumps, bumps in the outline you can pass off as hips or wings, bumps in the foil you can pass off as humps to maintain paddle power, bumps in the rocker are just not good. You will be fine with a stringerless if you are glassing with epoxy.
I with everyone… I love the stoke…
Plus - Playing here in the international sand box of sways… Don’t get any cooler than this…
nice work, good on you guys … here’s two cents from a backyarder, the next time you make a board, especially with a cut out type tail e.g. swallow… leave the tail squared off until you’re about 95% done shaping
Im reading over this thread and noticed the part where the foam wasn’t thick enough to compensate for the boards rocker.I normally foil my blanks thickness with a hotwire then bend the foam to the desired rocker using a vacume table and epoxy/glass/wood skins,once cured the skins hold the rocker in the foam.Not having a hotwire or elaborate vac table set up made me question what I would do in Rafis situation to acheive a bit more rocker.Seeing the board on the stand in the last photo gave me an idea.Once the rails are turned and the board is ready to be glassed,say you wanted 1 or more inches of rocker .Place your glassing stands in the desired location,then place enough weight on the center of the blank until the desired rocker is reached,then glass the rails with some 4 or 6 inch tape.After cured would the foam hold its rocker?I know alot of this depends on foam density,thickness and foil but I would love to see if this would work!
Wow.
thanks to everyone for your great responses!
I will try to answer as much as I can.
first off, thank you for the great tips.
though I am happy to prove you can shape with whatever you have lying around and there’s no need to spend hundreds of dollars on sites like Foam EZ,it doesn’t mean I want to shape the hard way, so if anyone has more helpful tips they are welcome.
so far we’ve been working off our own creativity and the aid of nice people on the web like here on Sway and other forums. from the outline stage onwards we have instructions on the DVD by Pravda surf “Surfboard shaping and design for beginners”. it looks quite helpful with methods tailored to first time shapers, has anyone worked with it? what do you think about it?
thanks for all the glassing tips too, since I’m still trying to wrap my mind around shaping I’m try not to think too much about glassing right now, but I’ll be sure to read through your comments again when I do.
about bending foam, I have received some great tips from Surfding and some other people on bending EPS boards with stringers, I was scared to do it on my first board but now that I work with the material more I see how flexible it is and I will be sure to try it in the future.
about Jesus’s 
post on bending stringerless boards while glassing, I have this resource: http://www.surfersteve.com/polystyrene.htm. there are some words on bending in the bottom of the page.
I will write a post about the gear I surf on now when I get some time.
Surf on
Rafi
Hi Rafi - enjoying your surfboard project, thanks for sharing! BTW, Foam E-Z is a great resource, I have bought fiberglass from them, and was very pleased with their quick service, and I think their prices are good too.
of course, Foam E-Z is a great resource. I just want to see if you can do it differently since the high shipping costs make them unavailable to me
dude great post!
Rafi, I cut strips of foam using a rocker template and glue them together to get the width I want. I can get more boards from the block of foam, and I don’t worry about the rocker being more than the thickness of the foam block.
If you have 2 rocker templates, you can hot wire the slices and it is a lot less work and a lot cleaner. Maybe for your next board you can try that method.
vacuum bagging with no bag or vacuum
(i,e, pushingthe envelope dumb hawaiian style)
5 In. x 1000 Ft. Stretch Film
Model # 5005001
Internet/Catalog # 202029371
Store SKU # 485367
$7.97
[img_assist|nid=1045012|title=flat sheet blank building 1|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1045013|title=flat sheet blank building 2|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1045016|title=flat sheet blank building 5|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1045134|title=flat sheet blank making 1|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0][img_assist|nid=1045019|title=flat sheet blank building insides 2|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0][img_assist|nid=1045018|title=flat sheet blank building Insides 1|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0][img_assist|nid=1045021|title=flat sheet blank building insides 3|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0][img_assist|nid=1045014|title=flat sheet blank building 3|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0]
[img_assist|nid=1044878|title=boards|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=0|height=0]
Next time you go to do templates do yourself a favor and download one of the CAD programs like AKUSHAPER or BOARDCAD. A CAD program will give you clean curves for your templates and rockers so long as you have an eye for what you’re looking for. There is a learning curve with those programs but they’re pretty intuitive.
Everybody who surfs should have to do something like this at least once. Including building the shaping racks? It would bring a whole new level of appreciation from people who like to complain about the price of surfboards.
Is there any other way to mark the rocker outline? That seems like the most annoying part.
WOW!!! I've been offline for quite a few months and it's so cool to see everybody's comments.
I will try to adress everything broadlly
Regarding CAD programs, we used the very common AKUSHAPER it took some practice but was quite intuitive.
for our next board I should take the time and build a hot wire cutter, we were so eager to go ahead we prefered working harder as long as we're touching foam.
I think that even though Rocker is the first step of building the board, it is only after you finish shaping your first board that you understand the matriel attributes of foam.
for my next board I will defenitly not be gluing two pieces of foam on topp of each other, sanding/sureforming glue is terrible.
I will also not be as scared to bend the foam now that I know how it reacts, I might even make a stringer next time.
Also, it's been a while sinve I've uploaded photos. I will give you a little teaser.
we prepared the concave and ruined the rail line in the tail :(
we were scared we'll have to start from scratch or do a l;ot of repairs.
luckily a shaper friend calmed us down with the best piece of advice:
First time shaperes should finish their boards no matter what mistakes they make (as long as the blank is still in the shape of a surfboard), and try it out in the water. it is the only way to learn.
I will upload new pictures very soon as we have finished shaping and we're almost ready for glassing.
Any glassing tips will be appriciated at this point.
Thanks again to everyone in this wonderfull community
I aplogize for my spelling, spellchecker is off....
RafisGarage
Ok.
so after a long long time with no pictures. here are two posts about the latest developments.
last time we cut out the outline, and after a few buffing and scrubbing we were ready to start working on the concave.
we did a single concave by making a deep channel down the middle of the board, starting at 12" from the nose. we then made two shallower channels on the outside of the first channel and then two even shallower channels outside the first two. it came out a little something like this:
[img_assist|nid=1050922|title=Concave step 1|desc=the three channels on the board, one side already blended|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]
after carving both sides of the board we start blending the ridges using sureforms and sand paper.
[img_assist|nid=1050923|title=blended concave|desc=Almost final concave shape |link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]
as you can imagine, after this we just finished blending the ridges into a smooth concave. but for what happened next I would like to go back in time and show you a picture of the markings on the board before we started curving the concave in.
[img_assist|nid=1050924|title=Concave markings|desc=The markings for where the concave should fit|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=480]
if you can notice, on the bottom of the board. two little markings along the red lines mark the last 12" before the tail. following the instructions on our dvd, we wanted to flatten out this part. the method: use the channels we dug in for the concave, only backwards. going with the planer deeping the shallow outside channels until they are the same depth as the inside channel. a misunderstanding of an illustration on the DVD (I will try to upload the illustration later) caused us to flatten out the rail section as well. as if this wasn't bad enough, we also dented one side of the board with sandpaper while trying to fix the problem.
after this, we were too bummed out to take pictures. but I will try to explain the situation: Imagine the rocker line ending 12" before the tail, and the last 12" as a straight ledge, kinda looks like a duck :)
we finished the day with low spirits, but good advice got us bak to the garage the following week in good spirits the story of the rails and the almost final step of shaping in the next post
Rafi
it was the most annoying part
but I couldn’t find any other way…
maybe someone else here can help
used Akusapher on this board
was helpfull but we still have a lot to learn, in shaping and CAD drawing
here is a little reminder:
about Jesus’s post on bending stringerless boards while glassing, I have this resource: http://www.surfersteve.com/polystyrene.htm. there are some words on bending in the bottom of the page.