Don’t get the Home Depot foam. Find an old board, strip it, cut he outline, practice roughing the rails. For another one ot two more practice runs, cut out the outline again, rough out the rails with the planer again…Do it again, and again…before you know it, you’ll have a 4’6" mini pinny gun!!!
I’ll tell ya what, it’s funner than heck.
Shaping boards is a lifelong journey. It takes some time to master on the shit. But when I was walking in the darkness I tried to grasp every single word from anyone who had skinned a blank. So, here it goes some tips:
1 - study the blank specifications, it will help you to plan the work and to find the better way to reach your idealized shape.
2 - try to understand the power planner as an extension of your body (and brain). I’ve been using a traditional Makita since I started (23 years ago), and it’s a damn good tool.
3 - PLEASE, avoid to strip old boards. They can ruin your power planner. They are wet and salty.
4 - Try to develop a way of shaping that is more comfortable and gives you confidence. You will know several shapers in your life, and you will find that everyone has a very particular way of working.
5 - I used to spend two days to shape an ordinary board with no power planner. It dropped to 2 to 3 hours when I started using the electric tool. Now, it lasts 1:15 h without no help of pre-shaping artifices.
Sure, it makes me proud because I know how it have costed me to reach this level. And I tell you that it is more mental than handle working. Good luck!!!
Thanks for all the responses. This is all very helpful and I have saved the replies in a word document to print and use.
I am amazed how you US shapers use those freely adjustable planers at all. Almost no-one in Australia uses them. I watched Timmy Patterson use one very well, but knew it was beyond me. In Aust, we use the angle of the planer to adjust depth of cut. You put the planer at a cut depth which is on the fine side, then angle the planer more perpendicularly to the direction of cut, to increase depth. The beauty of this method, is that the forearm muscles become the tuner of cut depth, not the fingers and hand. Being a larger set of muscles, the arms give a different type of feedback to the brain. You find yourself moving your whole body quite naturally(someone mentioned formal dance styles, and foot over foot walking.) A parallel comparison of skill level would be brick layers and carpenters verses artists and surgeons. However, once mastered, who knows which approach is better. Skill type is faster, but feedback from the tool to the design mind, is another question. As a test, you skill users could plane your planshapes. As an experiment for exagerating the feedback from my planer, I started creating planshapes without templates, using the static cut planer. The rocker on a shortboard might be just over 7" in total, whereas the rocker on the planshape (if you put your blank on its rail in your shaping stands)is roughly the width of your board (just over 18"). That’s over twice the curve to experience. Try putting nose centre and tail width dots in there usual places, put the blank on the rail, wedge in some blocks so that it’s slable, and plane the crust with a fine cut till the rough stuff is gone. Carve away at the inch and a bit of foam with much more abandon, but aim towards getting a half inch or so band of foam leftover around the imaginary planshape. Put in a tail pod measure if you like, and give the nose tip an extra 1/4" for safety. As you get closer to the dots, use a finer and finer cut.Check the nature of the curve you are making when you get to within 1/4" from the dots so that you can steer the planshape away from it being too tear-droppy (it tends to happen). If so use a super fine cut, which will be a negative cut, which misses completely at the centre, and wont cut anything with a lesser curve than what you are wanting to cut off. ie rest the planer on the planshape at half way and if it is skimming at that point, but just cutting towards the tail, then the bridging effect of the tool al by itself, will create an almost perfect blend between the two curves, with you being the final element, sensing the transition with the vibration and sound of the of the tool. The further you go towards the nose and tail, the finer you get. Once you get the one side pretty good, you can adjust with a bevel block. ie a block with a shim on one end which gives two points of contact like the planer. When you are really happy, you can transfer to the other side by making dots at certain widths, which are easily halved, eg 6" 7" 8" 10" etc.eg 3" on each side equals 6", 3 1/2" on each side is 7". Don’t get all anal, and measure every 6" along the stringer, and then find the exact width on the planshaped side and copy that measurement to the other side.That usually puts people of ever doing it again. It doesn’t matter where the dots fall along the planshape, as long as they are roughly equal on each side(the stringer will be a bit bent anyway) This way you only need 8 or 10 dots, and go for a smooth curve more than exactness. (I’d rather have two slightly different, but beautiful curves on either side of my board than two exactly the same ugly ones)Oh yeah, another thing about this technique, is that this opens you up to making each planshape match with each rocker. Even though it is established scientific method to hold one element static while changing the other, surfboard development this way, with timber planshapes frozen in time, limits progression, because both elements need to change at the same time. Hi and thanks to Mike, Rich, Dale and GregL…
Hey Greg,
The kind of technique you described is what I used to work the outline of an 8’0" quad I’m shaping. None of the templates in Joey’s shaping room would work for me so I had to wing it. I put the dots down on both sides of the board and I sketched the arc freehand with a pencil then cut the outline but did it with lots of room to work it down. I worked one side down to what I wanted it to be and then transfered all the measurement again and resketched the outline with a shapers square to the other side. I worked things until I had a close a reflection of one side to the other as I could manage. The shaper’s square is what got me there. I did the work with my great grandfathers Bailey No.3 hand plane and 80 grit on a big sanding block cause the Skill power planer just doesn’t feel comfortable in my hands yet. I just couldn’t bring myself to using it cause I feel like such a novice with it.
I checked out one of the clark planers at Fiberglass Santa Cruz on the weekend and the thing feels so good in hand. Much better to me than the Skill. I’m ready to give the next board a go with a planer but I think it’ll have to me the little one. The Skill just feels combersome to me. I think part of it is because I’m because I’m used to using smaller tools. Oh well, I guess I’ll always just be a whittler.
No I gotta go make some money so I can buy one.
Good Waves, Rich
Interesting post by a “newbie”.
Thanks to all, i’m printing all the thread to read it with calm, my english isn’t that good, but using the planer properly is the hardest part for me now (railbands, railbands, railbands…).
Keep wet!
Coque.
PS: the squish is alive and waiting for a set up of “magic fins”!
Yo Halcyon…if you have a good Skil I will buy you a brand new Clark Hitachi to trade. RB
Your post has a lot of info in it. I was looking at my Makita (model 1902) after reading the other posts and wondering how I would go planing while adjusting the dial. I also tried looking at the pics of planers on the net and tried to figure out how their adjustments worked. I came to the conclusion that their planers must be easier to adjust as I could not imagine being able to turn my Makita dial that much. Certainly, there is no discernible movement when looking at John Carper and Jim Phillip’s on their respective DVD’s (or none that I could see) whereas mine would be blatantly obvious.
The other thing I didn’t know (actually there’s countless things I don’t know, that’s why i like reading here)was about changing the angle of the planer changes the depth of cut. Still can’t figure out how that works but I’ve only used the planer a few times and finding out more and more as I do. The interesting thing though, is I got a better cut on the deck when I had the planer more perpendicular to the stringer than when running parallel, which is what you are saying. Why do hardly any other Aussies use the adjustable planers? Do we not have the same ease of adjustment on our models as they do in the USA?