So after shaping surfboards for nearly a half-century and having shaped roughly 1800 stand up boards, Standup Journal asked me to share my “reflections as a surfboard shaper” with you.    This article appears in the volume 17, number 4 issue of 2009 Standup Journal.  It was expertly edited to fit with in the space allotted for the Journal.  This is the complete unedited version with a little more detail and caustic remarks from a crusty old shaper like me.  Even though this was written for an SUP magazine, the ideas represented apply to surfboard shapes as well.

As I start this article, I feel a bit like an old musician who has mastered his instrument, but cant quite explain exactly what he does.  However, when you listen, you can hear the past, you can hear the depth, you hear the notes bend and the base line twisted.  I can only tell you that after running a Skil planer over foam for forty-nine years; the same things are going on.  I’ve got thick calluses on my hands that fit around the contour of the depth adjuster on my old skil, just like a guitar player has on his fingertips.  As he stretches his strings and bends his notes, adds vibrato, and “grows” a song each time he plays it, I constantly apply combinations of pressures and twists to that old skil planer to make the blades reach down into the foam behind the nose rocker and up under the tail or around the rails.  Each shape evolves as it becomes more familiar to me.   Ive learned how to cut at precise angles and take microscopic “bands” off the rails to produce a dozen different rail contours for a dozen different styles of surfboards.

As I work, I hear noise, but I feel the sweet sounds of a song born like a blank caressed, and given new life by me, a shaper.  You can see that I like to define shaping surfboards in much the same way as making music.  Im only trying to express how shaping surfboards by hand feels the same as playing a familiar song on a warm, mellow, old Martin guitar; there is pleasure knowing the guitar couldnt have done it without me.  I am not unique; any professional shaper with at least twenty years experience and ten thousand boards under his belt has mastered his tools.  As you listen to a recording, you can be amazed by the talent that produced the sounds, but when you look at a surfboard, how do you appreciate all the subtle, unseeable aspects of a surfboard shape that supports your weight, and uses the waves energy to project you even faster than the wave itself?

I love shaping surfboards, creating a functional sculpture from a blank (a shapeless block of foam) is very rewarding.  During the process, we shapers are combining an intimate relationship with our tools, experience with the proportions of the particular blank on our shaping rack, and slivers of knowledge gained from riding generations of surfboard shapes on decades of a variety of waves.  We combine rocker, V-bottom, concaves, rail contour, countless outline variations and thickness distribution; we give birth to a surfboard in reference to the guy who has trusted us with his order.

I look back to how I shaped ten years ago, after only thirty-nine years of experience, and I think; “You fool, you thought you were so hot”.  Now I know I can learn even more.  Professional shapers experience what I have observed as ten-year epiphanies; with less than ten years experience, they are like teenagers, they think they know everything, but they havent a clue about what they dont know.  After another ten years, they look back at how much they have learned and now they are convinced that they are the best shaper in the world.  One more decade and they finally see that shaping is a never-ending process of growth in understanding and technique.  They begin to realize that there are many other shapers who also have their insights and abilities.

The EPS (expanded poly styrene) Stand Up Paddle board (SUP) blanks that we SUP shapers are shaping now are so resistant to sand paper that they practically force us to become very exact with our planers. This foam is tough, gnarly stuff that requires a special grinding drum on a planer, and a heavy-duty tree limb saw for cutting outlines.  After shaping about 1800 SUPs, I can wrap that planer around a nice, full tucked edge, SUP rail and its nearly ready to send straight to the laminator.

You cant hear it, maybe you cant see it, but when you surf, there is a definite personality that each shaper breathes into the birth of a board.  You may have learned that you prefer a particular shapers boards to others, just as you prefer a certain style of music.  This is because each shaper has a certain feel that he likes his board to have.  Over the years, he will grow in his understanding of what to do in his shaping to deliver that feel time after time.  There really isnt a best shaper or best model, its more a process of discovering which style of shaping matches the feeling that you like.   For me, I like a board to feel fast; it has to be able to “back door” into a section and blast through with speed.  It also has to have a “sweet spot” where I can stand and it will follow my lead and turn almost faster than I can think.

Each generation of surfboard shapers since the beginning of the art has contributed step by step to the point where we are today.  Progress was amazingly slow.  As we look back, the path seems so obvious.  When I started back in 1960, the objective was to make a board symmetrical; the bottom was exactly the same as the deck.  Nobody thought about the fact that the bottom of the board planes on the water and the top of the board floes through the air.  Rocker was restricted to what you could carve out of a 3 ½” thick balsa wood plank.   The early polyurethane blanks had very little rocker as well because it took years to realize how rocker affects performance.  A few years back, I asked Phil Edwards, perhaps the most respected shaper of the 1960s, how much rocker he put in his boards back then.  His reply was:  “I have no idea, we never thought of measuring it”.  Today, most shapers precisely measure and proportion rocker very carefully into their boards.  It is amazing, but now days the evolution in surfboard shapes seems to happen nearly simultaneously around the world.  Its hard to tell the leaders from the followers.  Hum, maybe its spontaneous, universal creativity.

Naturally, SUP surfboards have gone through a similar evolution, because the early SUP shapers didnt have the experience riding them to know just what was needed.  However, the learning process has been much faster. In just four years, we have progressed from “narrow” 25” wide and 12’ long boards that were stiff and tippy to much shorter high performance boards that even though they have a great deal of volume, can maneuver as well as a modern long board.  This quick progress has been achieved only because many very talented surfer-shapers ride their creations, feel where improvements are needed and returned to the shaping room to make the changes.  I would say that nearly monthly, through surfing, we become aware of  “adjustments” that can be made to a rocker, outline, rail contour; that make next months boards just a little better than last months boards.  Now, may I point out that you dont get this from a molded board or from a board shaped and glassed by a guy in China who doesnt surf.  True, Americans have not gotten into making molded boards, so if you want a molded board you will have to go Chinese.  From some of the fat noses, contour-less rails and basically poor SUP designs that are invading our borders, who knows how they were created.  There are literally thousands of SUP boards being imported for sale into the USA.   Did you know that there are no US import duties on foreign made surfboards coming into the US while if I want to sell American made surfboards to China, Taiwan, they have to pay a 100% tax on my surfboards!!! We do not compete on a level playing field.  Our government is screwing the American worker out of a job while countries around the world tax our exports.  America should only import from any country exactly the same dollar amount that we export to them and we should impose exactly the same import taxes on their products that that impose on ours.  We do not do this,  our government is screwing us.

To me, surfboard making; (shaping, laminating, sanding, glossing, and polishing) is a noble profession just like any labor trade.  Every surfboard tradesman that I know is an accomplished surfer.  If you want a hand made EPS, epoxy stand up board, think about supporting the American surfboard worker.  Just like every other job and product that used to be made in America, surfboard jobs are being exported overseas.  Personally, my truck is a Ford!

From years of shaping large tandem boards, it was an easy transition for me to do SUP shapes, but I was used to making tandems for two people and for a year, I tended to shape SUPs thicker than necessary.  I still dont like to stand on a sinky, tippy board, so my boards tend to be quick, easy paddlers.  One way that I do this is: unlike a typical surfboard, I proportion more of the thickness of the board behind center.  I thin out the nose to reduce swing weight and add extra volume in the back quarter.  This also helps match the place where you stand while paddling to the place you stand after you catch the wave so that you dont have to jump back as you drop in.  In addition, the tail doesnt sink out from under you when you do your “wheelie” turn to spin and catch a wave.

At first, I was using normal surfboard rockers on my SUP shapes.  They were loose and “turny”, but as I got better at SUP surfing and started riding larger, faster waves I found that the additional width and volume of the big boards felt slow compared to a surfboard.  You may have noticed how much faster a short board is compared to a long board; the same thing applies to a wider, thicker SUP as compared to a long board.  Over time, SUP shapers have decreased the overall rocker on our SUP shapes in order to increase the speed.  The idea is to “fool the water” into reacting to your board as though it is shorter, thinner and narrower.  I do this by shaping the center part of the board with a much flatter speed area.  When you stand forward on this “speed” spot to trim across a steep wave section, the board accelerates as if it were a regular board.  When you step back onto the tail, the turning zone, the water feels the rocker of a shorter, “turny” board.  This combination produces an SUP shape with quite a bit less over all rocker than the same length long board.  For example, a typical 9’6” long board feels great with 3 5/8” of tail rocker (tail rocker is measured from the bottom-center to the tail tip), but I shape a 9’6” SUP as though it will have as little as 2 5/8” of rocker and then add ½” into the last 36” of the tail to give it an overall tail rocker of 3 1/8”.  This trick rocker goes much faster than a conventional rocker and lets the board zigzag all over the wave face.

The other factor that makes shaping SUP’s different than surfboards is the power that a paddle adds to your turn.  Generally, there is a trade off between speed and “loose turnability”; you get one or the other.  Using a paddle to assist your turn doubles the quickness of the turn.  That means that an SUP can be shaped quite a bit more on the side of speed versus the side of slower, but easier to turn.  These hybrid speed rockers in conjunction with paddle-assisted turns produces an explosive, fun, high performance SUP board.

Shapers have slowly incorporated curvier outlines to give the high performance SUP shapes an almost short board look.  This is because we have discovered that the average SUP surfer needs from 28” to 30” width in the center to avoid struggling constantly to maintain his balance.  The problem is that if you use a typical long board template, you would end up with a 21” wide tail that is just too wide.  Personally, I don’t like a tail more than 17” wide on my SUP.  I find that a board with a tail wider than that requires me to move my foot from center over onto the rail in order to do a powerful turn.  Then I have to move it back across to the other rail for the cut back.  This pretty much screws up the pace of your surfing.  True, a wider tail does catch waves easier, but I love a nice powerful 16 ½” tail on my SUP board.

For years, I have rebelled against shaping machines.  Each year, there are fewer new young guys learning the art of shaping. In a generation, hand-shaping skills may be lost forever.  This is because now, you don’t even have to copy a hand shape onto a computer, the software lets you create the shape on a screen, press a button and presto: ten minutes later, your blank is shaped.  Where is the joy and artistry?  Does the designer even surf?  I can assure you, many don’t!   However, how hard can a shaper work?  What do you do when more guys want your shapes than you can possibly shape by hand? The SUP explosion has finally convinced me that I need help from our new AKU 3000 shaping machine.  Over the last five years I have 100% hand shaped around 1800 SUP boards.  This has been a monumental physical task.  This year, I meticulously copied every detail of many of my shapes onto the computer.  I look at it much as a musician who can’t play live at every venue, but he can make a recording of his best work so that more people can enjoy his creation.  The computer also allows me the time to return to some conventional surfboard shaping and to do those many special custom SUP boards that keep the creative juices flowing.

I can still incorporate the same water to shaping rack evolutionary process because our AKU 3000 is just down the hall from my shaping racks.  When I want a small change in the design, I just call up the shape on the screen and redraw one aspect of the design. The machine does offer one more advantage in that the shape remains constant until I make a slight change.  I dont have to remember a myriad of contours while simultaneously changing a few of them.  When developing a new outline, I still prefer to draw pencil lines on foam to see the flow full size rather than creating a shape on a computer screen.  After I have it just right, I carefully transcribe the exact same curve into the computer.  After a shape is proven in the water, I can duplicate it exactly time after time or modify the size at the time of cutting for an individual surfer.

I find that when I sand a blank that I have designed but was cut on the computer, I dont mind because I know the roots of its beginning and I feel a part of this boards origins.  At the end of a day I can finish eight boards cut by the machine instead of four boards shaped completely by hand.  This sure helps when the order sheets are piling up and customers are calling, wanting their new boards.

At the end of a long hard day, I can look at the rack of boards that I have helped create and feel proud.  I see the customers name on the order sheet and I just know hes gonna love his new board.   After all these years, thats still what it comes down to for me.