How to Set Up a Surfboard-Shaping Shack

Series Summary

Surfing is an extremely popular sport that comes in many different forms: kneeboarding, bodyboarding, surf-skiing, tow-in surfing, and of course the traditional stand-up surfing. Some surfers enjoy the sport as recreation, while others surf competitively for national and worldwide titles. Traditional surfing consists of paddling out on a surfboard into the ocean and waiting for a breaking wave to come along. Once you see an opening, you paddle in the direction of the moving wave, matching its speed. Once the ocean begins to carry you, you can hop to your feet and maneuver your board, whether it’s to do tricks like hang tens or stalls, to go inside the tube, or to just enjoy riding the wave.

In this free video series, our expert Abe Toke will teach you how to make a surfboard. He will tell you all the necessary tools you will need, and talk about the different types of blanks, fins, and stringers. Abe will also teach you how to trim the crust, make an outline, draw the template, shape the board, level the stringer, and put in the rails. Abe will teach you how to add resin and airbrushing for color, how to add fiberglass for strength, and how to install the fins. He will even show you how to repair dings in your board!

Video Transcript

"ABE TOKE: Hi. Welcome to Expert Village, my name is Abe Toke. I'm going to take you through step by step to shape yourself a complete surfboard. So I want to talk about getting your room shape--a little bit ready for shaping a board. There are a few things that help out, having a nice flap pair of racks is key. These side lights are a key in that they cast a shadow just right for you to see the imperfections of the board. As you can see, one little flip of the board cast a shadow. So all these stuff helps. You're going to see me shape a board without most of the safety equipment, but you'll want eye, ear and dust protection. That's why we have the Shop-Vac or something. It helps you out with the dust at least. You can do it just in the garage, break out a pair of--just a blank with a little table and go to work, but it really helps to have yourself a decent pair of racks. These as you can see are makeshift racks right here. Two x 4's, they work great. If you want, you can weld up metal ones like the pros, anything to get yourself to a nice clean shaping room. It helps out in the clean shape. So I find that each time I made my shaping room a little bit better, my shapes got a little bit better, so it kind of goes hand in hand. I'm not saying you can't shape a great quality board without a shaping room but it really helps out. Colors to the room vary, I've done this kind of green. It's kinda like the blue or green screen thing that I guess movies use. You want like a solid background and I guess it really doesn't matter what color. And a lot of--most shapers use like a dark blue or a light blue, green, anything you can get a nice contrast versus from the foam to the wall and give yourself a nice good plain background to really reference the board off of. You can really look down and see that a nice white line across that and it tells me that's really straight. And I can use that and see that, and these shadows work to your benefit. A lot of times, guys will peel a side and that really lets you know where the blanks are. So that's why it's good to have the light system as well as flat surfaces."