Started shaping one year ago - time to say thank you

Hi.

My name is Michael.

One year ago I decided to try and built myself a surfboard.

Simply because I enjoy the process of building my own stuff (I´ve built most of my house, have built me a couple of bicycle frames, built some speakers, turntables, tubeamps and so on).

What can I say: I fell in love with shaping and building surfboards - fullstop.

 

After the first year an now a dozen surfboards (just for me), I thought its time to create an account and say thank you.

I´ve learned (and I´m still learning) so much from searching the topics in the swaylocks archive and forum and from all the shared knowledge here.

 

Some of the boards I´ve built:

(all are EPS/Epoxy)

 

 

And two picture of my shapingbay (shortly after I´ve built the bay, that´s why it´s so clean, by now the dust is ankle-deep most of the time)

 

Best regards, Michael

 

Did you glass them yourself too?

 

I’m impressed

I´ve built them from start to finish, yes.

Started with a big block of EPS (2lbs - 7ft long, 2ft wide, 2ft high) and a hotwire and finished with the glosscoat.

Going all the way means gettin the most fun and pleasure out of it (at least for me).

Colours and EPS is a bit to big for beginners boots, I know.

cutlaps, resinpanels, pinlines, bleeding, frothing…sometimes gave me a hard time and some practice for fixups.

I have a long way to go and a lot to learn, but it´s also big fun sorting out what works and what doesn´t.

It´s more about the journey and the experience I get, so I thought I start trying from the first board.

It would have been impossible without all the good hints and advice taken from here.

 

Damn, very impressed.

Please don’t call yourself a beginner anymore.

Your boards look pro.

As I looked at your photos, I had the same reaction as Hans, before I read his comment.        You’re bumping right up against professional quality workmanship.         Well done.

Well done you have talent .

Wow - That is literally from start to finish and your boards look really nice!  I like the whole process you’ve developed.  Something that caught my eye was the partially scrubbed away stripes.  Those are different and kind of cool.

You are a craftsman! Built your own house? I’d like to see pictures of that too. You’ve got some skills.

Nice Stuff!!!

Onward…

it’s all the little things added together that makeup an excellent craftsman with surfboards. You seem to have it all down.

You need a job in Australia?

Awesome work!

Really?

 

I think it’s possible Surffoils. Some people are fast learners especially if they are natural craftsman. The shop, tools, templates, etc are easy especially if you have the money and read most of the forums on sways. If you read and soak up all of the knowledge and expertise on here for a year you could definitely set yourself up really good. As for skills, that comes down to how quick you learn and your god given talents. When I started shaping I didnt have sways or youtube to fall back on for help. I just had John Carper videos and my own abilities. Im not pro by no means and dont even consider myself close to it, but I know my 12th board was by far way better than 1st. Had i had sways or youtube when i started, it would most likely have been even better. Maybe he’s a natural, maybe he has money, maybe he’s hooked like most of us and wants to make a lot of boards for himself. Could possibly be what you said and be a hack but not ruling out a natural yet. Just for reference, the first 2 pics is my 29th board and blue is 86th. Not 1st and 12th but definately an improvement. Blue is an 8’6" semigun shape.



Even in the balsa era, not counting the glueup time to produce a blank, I could shape, glass, and surf a new surfboard in 24 hours.     That was typically plus or minus one hour, depending on cure times.        I was doing that by the time I’d shaped a dozen boards.      Enthusiasm, and opportunity, are all it takes.        And a modicum of skill.       I think this fellow has all that.

…very good man.

Now may be you need to focus more on refining the shapes.

-The photo of the board in the beach is so natural that s incredibly organic. Can you share at what time; focal length, etc?

Also, your bay is way better than mine that I live from this labor.

 

Thanks

Thank you for the friendly comments.
I’m quite emberrassed.
Maybe the boards look way better on the pictures than they do in reality. There is no doubt I’m a beginner.

I ordered the eps and epoxy 13 month ago.
I’ve built the shapingbay after board 5 or so.
(I enjoy making the right tools for each of the things I build)

I think I can profit from the speakers I built, my bycycle frames and my other diy stuff.
(everything just for myself or one or two good buddies, I hate ruining the things you love by making a buisiness out of it)

My midbass horns/speakers are shaped from XPS and “glassed” with mortar and fibres, for example.
I’ve also built an epoxy mold for my concrete mid/high horns.

I always like to do some extensive reading for a couple of nights or weeks and then start working. I haven’t asked a question till now, cause it hasn’t been necessery. Nearly every question I had had been asked before and could be found answered in this forum.

You can see some of my backyard diy stuff here
www.miwis-bastelbu.de or on my flickr https://m.flickr.com/#/photos/91734031@N06

I’m in the woods for a cycling overnighter right now and got bad internetconnection.

I’ll be back with infos on the boards and pictures and I’ll try to answer the questions.

The green/orange board on the beach is a singlefin, 7.221.53. (I’m 6ft4 and 230lbs)

~~@Surffoils I really belive this guy,

1st -  because internet is full of information and nowdays making a surfboard is not a difficult task like 30 years ago. Just imagine Greg Noll having all the information and tutorials we have.

2nd - this guy is german, we european people know germans are very perectionists.

If u have skills and money to buy all the tools u need, making a board is as easy as farting.

Not all the people here start like me with no money,no time, no patience and no skills LOL.

MiWie u did a great job and u r a bloody hell of a pro shaper

Nice boards, nice shop, welcome to swaylocks!  It is an addicting hobby.  Not too many sports where you can design and build your own equipment!  Hope you continue to post & share pics.  :slight_smile:

Nice work.

I´m back at home now and hopefully I don´t bore you with a “few” more words (in my bad english, sorry for that)

I hope you don´t think I´m telling horseshit (which has never been my intention) after my explanations.

I didn´t come up with a single solution by my own, I didn´t invent something new, it´s just mindful reading of all the threads here, a little google research and some youtube videos. Just a backyard guy doing some surfboards that may look quite okay or maybe even good on pictures. Nothing more.

I think I´ll split the answer in two parts, otherwise it could get quite long…

 

I´ve been a DIY guy since I can remember. I´ve made the sketches for our house, insulated the basement, made the drywall workings inside, insulated the roof, welded all the stairways, layed all the tiles on the floor and so on.

I work as a civil engeneer from 7 in the morning till 5 in the evening. When I come home I go into the basement, where I have som old machines (the lathe is from 1931) and get on my workbench and do whatever I like (welding, brazing, building tools, woodworking, whatever). Working physically, with my hands and body gives me so much joy and pleasure.

I´m landlocked and quite abeginner surfer. Till spring 2015 I´ve only ridden rented popout boards in the 8ft Minimal range.

Than I bought a glassed 7.2ft big guy funboard.

It took 2 session to dent the deck with my thighs (popup) and get spidercracks along the stringer.  (that´s why I built stringerless boards till now)

At the same time I made this speakers.

The whole setup:

(I´ve made the racks, the amps, the turntable, the paintings, the wooden table, the stairways and so on…)

My surfbuddies asked me " Why don´t you try to build yourself a surfboard, you are doing all kinds of stuff, why you are hesitating with boards ? The speakers look quite similar to what building a surfboard must be like."

So I decided to give it a try. I was 100% sure I would fail, my wife thought the same.

Summer 2015 I did a lot of reading swaylocks and watched a lot of youtube videos, ordered resin and ordered a high densitiy EPS block.

I made myself a CAD file where put in a lot of pictures from boards, made sketches of the outlines and the foils. Compared what I measured, got back to swaylocks and searched for tail and nose width, bottom contours and so on. Tried to understand why the shapes are the way they are, where the boards differ and what design elements are the same and so on. I´m still doing this with every board I do. Most of you will think this is nerd-nonsens. Maybe, but I´m an engineer and I can´t deny it sometimes.

(but I´m a son of a craftsman as well, and I love spending my time on the workbench, so there are two hearts beating in my chest)

I also tried to pay attention to all the details in the pictures of you guys.

What do your tools look like, what kind of jigs, racks, templates, tapes etc. do you use.

(I remember Barry Snyders picture with quite a lot of templates lying in his garden for example.)

My database looks like this by now:

I built a few basic tools, quite what I use till now.

(I got a sander and a cheapo planer for 30 bucks each, thats it.)

I started in a spare room in our basement.

In august 2015 I built my first board, in september and october 2015 I worked on Nr. 2 and 3. In january 2016 I made Nr. 4.

(I got bitten by the board-building bug badly right at the beginning of Nr. 1 and I´m addited since then)

From left to right it´s: Nr.2, Nr.1, Nr.4 and Nr. 3

Nr. 1 was about 6.6x23x3.1/8, flat bottom, 57l. Rocker was something like 4.5 nose / 2 tail.

Resincouours. A lot of bleeding under the tape, a lot of teared EPS beads, deep cuts with the cutlaps, wet and pooling glassing, a lot of sanding.

A clumsy shape, too much volume,  I only surfed it a couple of times.

Nr. 2 is appr. 6.2x22.1/2x3, flat rocker (3.8 nose, 1.5 tail) concave with varying deep throughout the bottom, rails like 60/40 with an early transition to a hard edge in front of the quad setup. 50l

Started sealing the tapelines, less bleeding.

I didn´t like the rectangular nose on turns and how it felt on turns in general.

Nr.3 similar dimensions to Nr.3, but 4.5 noserocker, 2 tailrocker, slight single concave with some central channels getting deeper throughout the tail. 50l.

Airbrush on blank, clear glassing with a different resin. The resin was to thick, moved it around to much and got a lot of frothing. Channels were hard to glass and sand.

Had a burnthrough on one rail, had to do a patch.

I love that board. It doesnt like when it gets steep an more than headhigh. (but I think it´s also due to my bad surfing skills)

Nr. 4 was the fisrt board where I really loved the look of the shape.

( I remember Stingray and Bill Thrailkill and others who told not to chase for numbers, but for a good shape. Just one of the countless advice that I tried to save in my mind.)

It´s a singlefin (2+1) something like 7.2x21.5x3.

Beeknose, beveled rails on top with a flat deck.

Resin foamstain, but after I glassed the bottom clear, I didn´t like the shades of the colours and did the bottom in slightly different shades as opak lam.

Not too much area in the tail (for a 230lbs guy) to hold tight in steeper waves  I hope (I´ve not had bigger waves since I´ve built it)

I changed for another resin systems with this board (german boat-supplier, a thin laminating and a thicker coating resin). Was a good improvement. I´m using this product till now with all the following boards.

Nr. 5 was just experimenting with tints.

I wasn´t pleased, because the shape lacked in fluid forms and lines.

I decided to split my workshop in the basement in two halfs and build the shapingbay.

This is how it looks today:

This improved shaping so much.

It´s amazing what can be seen with the right light.

Nr. 6 was experimenting with deck-channels and foamstains again.

A midlength egg for my wife.

2+1 finsetup.

Some kind of rolled vee / panel vee in the front and middle with a vee throughout the last third of the board, but not until behind the fin. Just a little double concave in the vee.

(And again: all these suggestions for the bottom contour I stole / copied / learned from you guys.)