Curious if there are telltale signs of a machine shaped board. I have a number of boards from APS machines and have never noticed anything that would indicate a machine shape.
Do other machine methods leave indicators?
roger
Yes. A price that reflects low labor cost. =-)
Once you surf it twice and the deck is crushed cause they took that 5"8 x 18.25 x 2.375 out of a 4 inch thick blank- mowed right through all the good strong foam and sold you a marshmallow.
May be a bit of an exaggeration but most dont care where the foam comes off the board, they just load a blank with enough foam to yeald a board from.
When the guy who runs your machine just pushes buttons and gets paid 10.50 an hour- its hard to get a 20-30 dollar an hour machinest quality work out of him so all variables are eliminated, usually at the expense of quality.
Ture that Barry rocks!
I picked up a longboard for a friend from a well known So. Cal. shaper. Got it home and took it out of travel bag to inspect. I wanted to make sure it was ok before I bring it to Mexico for my amigo. When I view it in good sunlight lengthwise, I can see many marks that would be consistent with machine shaped boards(other than APS) that I have seen before the finish hand shaping. The glass work and all looks excellent and you cannot feel any grooves…but they are obvious to the eye.
I have since e-mailed the board’s owner to find out if they paid for a hand shape or what their expectations were and after a few back and forth e-mails…the expectation was that the well known shaper would be involved to some degree…and that the cost would have been alot more for his custom hand shape…they never mentioned a shaping machine to the customer.
For me, I would have never bought one of these boards, as the ones I have ridden over the years seemed sluggish and the price they command could have bought two better boards from a lesser known shaper(machine shaped or not).
roger
You’re exactly right, if the fine-shaper doesn’t sand the flats hard, the “trails” from the CNC cutter head passes will show in the finished blank. If you look closely, you could see them after the board was glassed.
Thats a fairly innacurate call.
Except for the tiny almost backyard guys, the inhouse, and cutting house machines run on really tight tolerances for blanks and cuts. Very,very minimal off the deck especially.
All the big names are fanatical about it.
most machine guys are crazy detailed as well. I know guys running maybe 25 machines. I couldnt tell you a single one that would just slap blanks on Willy Nilly. Is it happening? Sure but its more on the 5-10 board a week guys who are just buying stock blanks and cramming whatever they can in. A good shaper knows his rockers and blanks and a good cutter can index them properly.
Even with the thicker blanks its not easy. Especially about 12" from the nose.
Just looked again and you might say it looks like it has a bunch of little pressure dings…all over the place…how long would the finish guy normally take to do it correctly?
roger
If it’s trails from the cut head it would show as rows concentric to outline, getting parallel as they get to center (stringer).
A quick finisher can do them in about 15 minutes, but some guys spend lots more time. I’ve seen some spend just as much time as a full handshape, just obsessing on details. Usually these are guys who are finishing their own files.
I think the only way there would be machine grooves left on the board , is when the cut blank is cleaned up by an inexperienced shaper , like in some pop-out manufacturer with no shaping skill. There’s many very good shapers using machine cuts these days , but they know what they want from the machine. If the blank is glued up to the correct deck curve , the cut on the deck should be minimal , and the deep cut is off the bottom. If all the machines mysteriously dissappeared tomorow (lol) , it would certainly sort out the shapers from the pretenders , but it ain’t gonna happen. The cat’s been out of the bag long enough to have a large litter of kittens.
After the final sanding, the finished blank should be carefully ‘‘heat gunned’’ to raise the slightly compressed foam. Then completely resanded again. Sometimes, even that doesn’t fully remove the pass lines, of the cutter head.
The funny thing is that a worn out cutter head will actually heat up the grooves.
Molecular change in the foam.
You will actually have to sand pretty deep to remove the heat lines.
The stringers wear out those cutter heads pretty fast.
When I airbrush over some of these, the paint will reveal the very apparent lines.
Computers have made hack craftsmen look like hero’s.
^this
I just had a 71 year old shaper look at the board…he knows the guy whose name is on the board and is sure it is a machine shape and he reckons the flaws are 50% finish shaper and 50% sander…he did not have much good to say about the board or the shaper…
As long as it rides good, I am sure the owner will be happy.
Thanks for the imput.
roger
hang on… surely some machine pass lines that can be seen but do not effect the finished glassed shape are better than melting the foam and resanding the board for appearance reasons??
Worn cutting bits makes it hard to finish these properly .
No one should be using a worn bit since the whole machine thing was supposed to be about incresing quality and production .
When a bit becomes worn it does not cut the board to the file .
On one type of machine its standard to do 250 cuts per 300.00 bit
At 100 it starts to show wear .
at 200 cuts you have 3 /16 more concave thru the bottom + major scaring
I asked for only 100 ever to cut on a bit and how much more would it be to do this .
Its about 1.75 more
They won’t do this .
On to the next machine :-)
What part of ‘’…carefully heat gunned…‘’ was it that you had difficulty understanding? Is it news to you that a new surfboard is ALL ABOUT APPEARANCE ? That was the thrust of the opening post. Was there a way to tell? Yes, by certain aspects if the appearance. What I described in my post is commonly done by several talented ‘‘pro’s’’ that I know. Perhaps the technique is not for you. Those that can, do. Those that can’t, don’t. All depends on what is important to you, or important to the customer.
Why do so many CNC boards have twists ?
true for any machine…even a power plane , or a hand plane for that matter. A newly sharpened bandsaw blade will only be new on the first job…after that , it begins to favour one side of the cut , and gradually , but surely become unusable for accuracy.