Some say it can’t be done…Others say “Yeah”…If you’ve got one, let’s see it…
Deleted
Surfboards built without brains, who has made them? Post up your pictures. This place is getting lowly. Let’s set the bar here, Paul so when the economy fails, or a EMP takes out the grid, the new king will be the guy who can make boards without a power tool.
And no templates, machinery, calipers, rulers, tape measures, or jigs. “SoulierThanThou Surfboards, LLC”
10 bucks to the first guy to shape a board with his teeth …no hands !
Geez. Sorry I replied.
A reactionary attitude to counter balance the
you cant touch my tool selectionitus.
In high carpentry and cabinet making
the you can’t touch this barge of fecum
is well tuned by a guy named Tage Frid
l
from like finand whh teaches the merits
of cutting dovetails with a bow saw.
Dr. jensen is starting a smoke signal fire
to help consider the 'Tool Race’has indeed
a plauseable point of diminishing returns.
Granted no voltage is a kinda hard to live with
reality for the likes of us addicted to power tools
evolved humanoids, BUT,as a guy who
couldn’t sharpen a jack plane blade very well at all
the thought of Bill balsa making a wood board
in the driveway on some saw horses with a
hand saw and a blockplane is a refreshing
conceptual alternative…
or maybe shaping a woodie on the beach
and burning the scraps.
beach fires ,littering are indictable
in this world of nazi beach cops
and hyper tooled up surfboard facilities.
The no power tools road if for only one
feature is attractive,Quiet and peaceful
without the scream of planer and sander
and router and…
…ambrose…
gotta be nuts to even think about it?
yep and sometimes thinking Nuts
stuff is a relief in a world where
the sanity of contemporary solutions
must be periodicly reviewed.
my hands tingle
after sanding for a while.
a diffrent tingle from a grinder
than a block
aloha from waipouli…
not hard to do, built my first 2 boards with just a surform, sanding blocks, and a small wood plane. Template drawn by eye, rocker ignored, fin position guesstimated, and what came out were 2 crude pieces of crap that were actually fun to ride (what isn’t when you’re 17 and high as a kite). The hardest part by far was pulling the glass of the longboards being sacrificed to leave enough foam to work with. A procedure running rampant in thousands of garages across the world as the ‘shortboard’ revolution gained steam.
Oh, and about that Harbour Trestle Special and Hansen classic that were sacrificed for said crapolas…guess which ones I would really, really like to still have today…
And regarding a board being built by hand without power tools being a litmus test seperating ‘thems that can from thems that can’t’ ,
are we going to have a judging panel for best looking board?
maybe a team of riders to award best riding?
In case of a tie, shapers have to whip it out for the tie breaker, longest wins…?
Sway’s seems to be suffering a humour shortage of late, whereas the "I can piss further then you can’ quota seems pretty full.
It’s just a surfboard design forum, no cancer being cured here.
I think a more relevant challenge of who can shape without the training wheels is the 5" thick block of foam.
Some stupid stuff sure does get posted around here. Its like everyone around here is uncapable of original thought. A bunch of sheeple, or chickens with their heads cut off. If this is your future count me out. Stupid concepts and stupid parameters, I can’t put it any more clearly. I know Barry has the skills, but it would be a total waste of his limited and valuable time. I could do it to, but its so stupid, and what’s the point.
I was down visiting my friend Jim Phillips not that long ago, and the creep who scrubs for CI was trying to pick a fight with him, what a full barney kook, and the thing is he thinks he’s a better shaper than Jim; what a barney; Jim’s too nice a guy to post something like this, but what a kuk.
Kinda funny how things have progressed or regressed. When I started making boards again in 2005 or so, I didn’t have anywhere to work, so I used a crawl space under my house. I have a photo of the first board I shaped down there, an EPS compsand board made from gluing up 2 layers of Home Depot insulation foam. I didn’t have power tools to use just a surform and a long sanding block.
I had to shape this on my knees because there wasn’t enough room to stand up down there. I used a big cardboard box my iMac came in to work on. You can see that at this stage I have slots that inserted balsa to make sure the fin box would be strong. I didn’t have work lights, but I got enough angled light to see the curves. I eventually dug out that space by hand and made nice little work area where I make things. I’ve also acquired enough tools to work faster and cleaner. It’s important to know where you came from and remember all the lessons from the past, but it’s also good to appreciate how far you’ve come.
heres a story a long while ago’’
time 1958 pp boatbuilder i find some big lumps of balsa in the yard enough to glue up to get a shape out of about 10’ i had only been surfing about a yr so using a aboard that i had bought i think it was gordon woods’’ we set about shaping this thing at about 4 ‘’ thick
if only we would have had a brain we could have bandsawn the foil before we glued up not much rocker those days?
so it was we cut a plan shap but wondering best way to get some shape in this thing remember no motor planer was ever used in this yard
were not even aware they existed’’
** so here is this thing sitting on two saw horses in the skiff shed and we had discussed this with one of the old plankers in the yard this man had but 2 tools **
**broad axe & adz **
so i get a job in the other part of the yard
**and when i get back to the skiff shed here is this board all roughed out in foil looking just like the woods board except for smothing it all and turning the rails **
**he had done it with an adz during his lunch break **
**bottom line is everything i ever done from then untill today i try to remind my self how humble i am to our great fore fathers who had no choice **
but to use there hands
cheers huie
My grandfather built several boats using the strip planking method. He built a steam box to bend the planks. My dad said he would get wood when the ships came in to Honolulu Harbor then cut them up and make his planks. All the work was done with hand tools. I once asked my dad how he got the strips, and he said he cut them from larger pieces, then planed them with a hand plane. We still have that plane. My uncle once told me that my grandfather had tremendous patience when he worked with wood. He would sand things down till they shined like glass then spray laquer over it. We had the spayer and compressor for many years, but one day the compressor motor died. Dad was going to rebuild it, but he never did.
My grandfather’s younger brother was an old time Waikiki surfer. He knew all the original beachboys, and hung out with them when he wasn’t working. He built his own wood boards too.
Man, I was thinking my plate is too full right now to participate in the Dr. Jensen Acoustical Soul Shaping Challenge, but now that ghettorat’s upped the coolness factor of the whole thing, he’s got me wanting to join in too, what are the specific rules here? SPELL IT OUT MR. JENSEN! I just might want in.
BTW Mr. Mako, that was a cool longboard pic - the lam matched your trunks, haha!
huie rules : respect.
…ambrose…
humility sandwiches
all around down by
the blue campfire.
make mine toasted.
Figures that a "carpenter’ would offer such a challenge. Reedickless. Been there --Done that with tools and materials bought from Mitch. Back yard under an Acacia tree in PB. Never looked back. I understand the need to stir things up around here though. so it’s cool.
“Some say it can’t be done…Others say “Yeah”…If you’ve got one, let’s see it…”
Where exactly is the challenge in those words…???..You either have something to show, or not…
One guy who posted up a photo then deleted it when the “I know better than you” voices came on strong…
A lot of us here on this surfboard building forum started with less than optimal tools…My earliest boards were built in the '70’s, outside on a dirt driveway…For cheap, I bought a 'second quality", thick, square railed blank…I had a handsaw, surform and a sanding block… I could afford that…It took a long time to find the board in that blank and I finally found it…I rode that board to death, then as I became less broke, I slowly bought some cheap, low end, homeowner quality power tools…Far from what the industry standard was…It was what I could afford…Rent, food, beer and boards…A pretty simple life…The boards made with those noisy, high vibration tools turned out better than the driveway boards…A natural progression that has continued…
My board building passion expanded as my skills and cash did, eventually to the point where foam wasn’t enough of a challenge…I know I’m not the only one here who moves beyond what most here are content with…The seeds for those progressions away from the conventional start somewhere, and it’s nice to see it when it happens…
Speaking only for myself, it’s all about personal challenges…If you fall prey to the challenge of someone else, you are doing it either to feel superior or address an insecurity…A suckers game on both ends…
Personally, I’m moving forward (some say backwards) with the hollow boards…No internal frames…Going for a better “feel” of the board on the water…That resonance thing…Just to see if I can…Maybe pique the curiosity of others, or not…I don’t care what the naysayers say, I’m just having fun doing stuff that I haven’t done before…And that all got it’s start on a dirt driveway…
I’d still like to see boards that might not be “state of the art”, but boards one can say “Yeah, I did that”…
sorry wrong thread
The ultimate competition is the individual vs. himself/herself. Improvement comes from winning that competition.
It is most unfortunate that Mako deleted his post. I saw it before he deleted it. More power to you Mako …
I would be proud if I could say I made my first surfboard without electricity. I wish I could. I needed to use a Craftsman orbital sander I bought at Sears to shape and glasss my first surfboard on top of 2 galvanized trash cans turned upside down (towels for padding) in my parents garage with doors-open lighting. I burned up 2 orbital sanders making several surfboards, fortunately Sears honored their Craftsman lifetime guarantee in those days. After my first 2 surfboards, friends of friends asked me to make them a few surfboards (longboard cutdowns). It turns out that I did not like it enough to keep doing it for $25 + materials – I found more lucrative ways to generate income. Those were the true Glory Days.
I had no digital camera back then. I got a Polaroid Swinger for Christmas when I was 15 or 16. But I needed blanks, resin, cloth, fin boxes and fins more than I needed Polaroid film. (None of the pictures from that camera lasted long anyway)
EDIT: Great story Hewie. I would have loved to have seen him shape that balsa …