I am looking to shape a board away from home and do not have a power planer with me. What can I use as a substitute to take off the hard shell of the blank and perhaps a little more underneat? Thanks
buy a shitty B&D planer. it;s worth the $65.
If you have home depot or some other cheapo store around, you can get a disposable eletric planer for about $25-35. It’s worth the money, shaping without powertools is ALOT of work. You could also use a powersander of some sort, but then you have to be really careful. regards, Håvard
The first three boards that I build were skinned with a router(1/2 inch wide bit). The stinger was cut about 1/16 to 1/8 deeper that the rest of that side. It is hand sanding from there. http://www.viser.net/~anthwind/
just get a good 12$ stanley block plane and sharpen the blade really good. works fine.
I did my first 3 with a block plane…
You can use a long surform and a sanding block with 50 grit. It’s more work, but that way you remove material slowly and it’s a good way to discover the shaping process. For the sanding block, make one out of wood with a tightening wedge at one end, fit inside a 4"x24" sanding belt. I did my first board with those tools and it worked. It built up my arms and shoulders, too. Doug
Just finished shaping my first board this weekend, no power tools. I used a good heavy block plane, with a not-so-sharp blade. I think this worked fine for taking off the shell, but if i was going to use that same block plane for removing foam, it would have def. been sharpened. Also, the bottom shell is easier to take off. Tips on shaping… i would say start with the tail rocker and foil. Found this out the hard way, had to go back and glue foam on the nose. All in all, block plane, surform, 40/80/120 G sandpaper and a fred were all i used. didnt even need a baby block plane for the nose on deck, just surformed it down.
Invest in a planer, you’ll be doing more shapes.
A flame thrower
its quite easy to shape an entire board with a hand plane. Just get a blank that is close to the thickness and foil that you want the finished board to look like.
sharpening the blade will really help. i go like this: 1.skin and true the bottom.plane to thickness(leaving 1/8th") 2.trace outline, cut w/jigsaw, leaving 1/8th-1/4". 3.true up outline w/ surform and sanding block. 4.fred bottom rail bands. 5.foil deck side nose and tail. 6.measure and carve rail bands. 7.add bottom contours. 8.dragon skin rails(deck up on stands). 9.blend rails w/ 80gr screen(rail side up in stirrups). 10.finsh sand with foam pad and 80, 100,120,180 screen(i do bottom, rails, deck in that order working thru the diff. grit screen. that’s just my little routine. of course theres some fine tuning of tail rocker and stringer in there somehwhere. i also wait till just before finish sanding to do the final nose flip/foil. this is on a really close tolerance blank. i like this process cause i end up with a barely touched deck and even w/ 4oz glass rarely get deck dents. i’m sure everyone has their own order of things, i think the key thing is to focus on one that works for you.