Surfing Waves

As I brush the foam dust from my arms, I figured it was time to let ya'll in on how I'm doing with the shaping.


As of now, I have made my template, my racks, my blocks, traced my template to the blank, cut it out, cleaned up my outline cut, flattened the bottom, and taken down the excess stringer. I am now waiting for the assistance from a local shaper so I can start on the rails. Don't wanna mess them up.

So here a couple of pictures.

In no specific order, uncut blank, cut blanks(the big one is a friend who's shaping with me), template, and cut blank in racks.

whoops, the last one is just a picture of my garage....but whatever

tomcat360 wrote:whoops, the last one is just a picture of my garage....but whatever

so your shaping your own board?
thats awesome

looking good, any plans on the graphics to go on it or are you gonna keep it pretty much blank?

gonna do an acid swirl/splash on the bottom, with a white top and then my logo I use on my skateboards.(my avatar, but it has some writing on top and bottom, which somehow got cropped in my avatar)

Both looking real nice, what are the dimensions TomCat?

Final deminsions will be 6'8"x20 1/2"x 2 13/16" on mine, and 7'4"x21.5"x 2.75" on the other.

I'm gonna go practice some rail bands now.

The 7'4" looks real similar to my 7' which i love, and the little egg looks like fun too. Brents got a bit of a thing for eggs (as well as fish) at the moment and they are slowly begininning to grow on me too.

Good work!

Looks good Tomcat. I would love to try shaping, maybe someday. Keep us updated

Just finished doing a practice rail. Turns out to be not as tough as I suspected, although I'm sure it will be a challenge to keep them symmetric.

Hey Tom that's a rather clean garage, i bet it doesn't stay that way for long!
How are you planning to do your resin swirls? I've done a few now and have had a few experiences of them and they can be most unpredictable!
Let us know if you need any advice.

KS

I plan on getting my resins tinted in seperate containers, get them pigmented, kick them and stir seperately, then put them all in one bucket and stir like twice.

I'm doing epoxy, so I'm not sure if it's going to act different.

You have any tips?

And yeah, the garage goes in cycles. Gets to absolutely unbearable, and I clean up, and its nice, and I work in it for like 2 days, and then its unbearable...

That's the best way i've found for resin swirls but also be aware that where the colour hits the blank it stays so tyou can influence the design by how you pour your mixed up bucket. Good luck, sorry can't help you with epoxy.

KS

KS out of interest, do you only shape your own boards or do you shape for other people as well?

Hey there el_timmo. I do shape boards for other people, mostly my friends and i've a couple in one of the local shops but it's more of a hobby as i have another full time job. But that said i really enjoy making surfboards and i've already got too many boards so to stop my fingers from getting too twitchy i do make boards for others, if it's the right kind of board of course.
I'm doing a retro fish for wishkid wales at the moment
https://surfing-waves.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5348
I'm enjoying this one as he's set me a bit of a challenge with the graphics on the board so it's good.

Cheers KS

that's pretty cool KS...... what sort of prices do you shape boards at? I'm thinking about getting a fish for the Summer when I go home, and just thinking it might be good to get one custom made for me!

tomcat360 wrote:whoops, the last one is just a picture of my garage....but whatever

Good grief, you call that a garage?

Where's all the junk? The rusty paint pots? The elderly bicycles? The oil-encrusted tools? And of course the rack of dead/dying/to be resuscitated one day surfboards?

My garage is fo full of junk and toys that I can barely walk into it!
I should get one like yours. In addition to the one Ive got of course

I've sorted out all the crap that doesn't directly relate to what I'm doing

so someone will walk down and be like, "Where's my rain coat?"

I just act like I can't hear them over the screech of sandpaper...



The garage used to be double that size, but we put up a wall, and on the other side have a pool table and a couch, chair, tv, playstation, dart board, and of course, the quiver.

ha I just finished my 47th board today and still using four buckets as stands...


looks great so far, what's the density of your blank

wow, 47? I had no idea you were up that far. (skate or surf?)

It's 2 lb density. Today the shaper who's helping us came over and we started working on the rails. Doing them all by hand with a surform and marking down the bevel cuts with a rail band tool.


I was doing the resin swirl, but the guy suggested to not. So I think I'm just doing a dark opaque green on the bottom and white top.

Also, changed from doing warp glass to doing straight 6oz.

Tommorow I'm probably going to do some rail shaping, as of tonight it's hitting the graph paper.