first attempt

for the first board I ever attempted to shape I bought with a mate called fong, two 35 dollar seconds blanks. My blank was 6'8 long.  I used for a template my board which is 6'6 long, its a round tail quad.  What I did was lay my board down on the blank and just draw with a pencil around the shape, lol, extremely croud, not effective, but fun.

After talking to Mark from More Surfboards he decided to donate his first ever stands to me, agian they are crude, but you can balance them out, I set them in buckets and concrete and they will do till I can afford to get some decent steel stands for shaping and glassing racks.

A good mate Ledge sold me a cheap electric planner, not the perfect planner but it will do for me and away I went.

I found a teacher, he goes by the name Huei, a absolute ledgend of a bloke, we talk regulary and I can contact him by emal or phone, he gives me awesome advice and guidance plus talks design with me and is helping me immensly during my early days, which is right now.

You can see from the pitures that the outline is not the greatest, but what can you expect from my rough method.  I had no shaping bay at this time, just the open air basically.

To cut out the outline I used a jig saw, I dont advise anyone to use this method, get yourself a good handsaw and only use it for cutting out the outline, you get a smoother cut and closer to the line, with no dips or irregularities.

I then skimmed the bottom, left it flat, skimmed the deck, did the rails by eye and judged by what looked right.   The results came out like you can see by the photos

I did not glass this as I used this blank as a learning tool and after completing the 6'6 I immediately cut it down agian and made I think a 6;3, then I made a smaller board,  then finally cut it down agian and made 5'4 egg for my boy.  Thats four shapes from the one blank, what a blast and it still makes me laugh today thinking of what I did, when i finally post the pics of my boys little egg you will see how little rocker there is, thats cause there was hardly any rocker left in the blank, lol. 

I primarly used this blank to learn how to use a planner, how to shape rails, made many mistakes and learnt from this, learnt how to sand and the methods used for this.  It was great experience and I recommend this hobby to anyone that surfs, everyone should shape at least one board, just to appreciate what the real masters can do, its not easy.