Surfing Waves

Jus a lil question - If you have a board custom made, what do you expect from it and the shaper who shapes it?

Do you expect the shaper to shape it to your spec?? And would you say a machine shaped board was a custom board????

I apologise if this doesnt make sense.

Think I get your Welsh ramblings

My defenition of a custom made board, is that the shaper does exactly what I want, and he makes the board according to my every specification.
Not just lenght, but rocker of the board, tail type, wight, breadth etc etc.
If he flogs me one that is exactly just that already, I wouldnt mi, glassingnd, but I sincerely doubt thats possible to just have one in stock, exactly the way I like it

bit off topic, but I always talk to the shaper first, about the specs and listen to his opinions, after all, he is the professional

A good idea is to write down the measurements, type board, type tail and so on every time you ride a different board. Write down what you like and don't like. After riding, say 20-40 boards, you should have a pretty good idea about what you want for your custom board.

A custom board is a board made for you. Simple.
A custom board might be better than a machine made board - or it may not...it depends on what you asked for and your shapers interpretation of your desires. Most shapers want measurments to work to...but they then work with a margin of error that really depends on their mood, if they like you or not and how many beers they had last night. Most shapers are pretty average really - they're just guys mowing foam for a living. The best shapers moved onto machines several years ago to get better quality levels and consistancy in their shapes - or licenced their shapes to be machine made. Examples, Al Merrick, Lost, Rusty etc etc...

The best board of all is a machine made board that's been custom designed for you with a shaper feeding the measurements into the shaping software. it will be technically "perfect" (identical rails on both sides, measurements cut to your exact request).

I'm sorry to spoil the romance of hand-made boards, but the truth is they are most often of a lower physical standard than a machine cut, but hand finished board.

They do have your name on the stringer under the glass however....

I love my custom made and the guy who made it is totally awesome!

He's totally in love with surfing and knows all sorts of boards and breaks from our local coast. He has a real good idea about the conditions that I'll mostly be using the board in.

My board is the sweetest ride I've ever had! Everything is just nice for where I'm at with my surfing. Like... totally new to the addiction. It's got awesome rocker and it turns real easy responsively, massive fat and wide so I paddle real easy, catch waves real easy, trim real easy...

ha ha.. not that it's all easy. But relatively so. yea??

I don't know that the physical performance differential is going to make any significant difference... not only at this level, but with the haphhazzard messy waves we mostly get around here, It probably won't let you enjoy the difference too often anyway a.

Just a guess of course!?

It turned out a bit cheaper too. And and. It was really great initially to ask him a whole lot a kook style questions like, so... do you wax the underside of your board to make it go faster??? LOL.

ok no i didn't ask that one. I got him to show me how to tie my board on and not loose it. Pretty easy.

He made me feel real easy about just getting the hell out there and ripping it up and not being too worried about arsing my board up with pressure dings and stuff.

PLUS!! No one will want to be seen dead with it because it's got my own styly Island Style designs on it and stuff. And printed in big letters on the bottom: STOLEN FROM....

nah nah.. not a bad idea tho!

Cheesy moment: Heart and Soul make a custom board.

I LOVE MY BOARD!!

and don't get totaly pissed at him if it's not exactly to your exact specifications, they know more than you do.

say if you weighed like 150, and you wanted a 6'1x11ishx18.5x14ishx2.125 with 6" nose rocker and 3.5 tail, and this was gunna be your everyday board, you didn't surf every day of the week, maybe once or twice at the most, and on average you didn't surf kirra every day, he's gunna make some changes so you're not totally bummed that you're in water up to your tits and can't catch a wave to save your life on it. They're gunna do what's gunna work best for you, not try to do everything you say.


it's like your parents, you think you know more than they do, but really they're much smarter (sometimes)