Surfboard Shaping: Blank Makeup

Series Summary

Surfboard shaping is a craft that has been around for generations. Early shapers would pay their dues repairing dings and working in the shaping room for years before shaping their first surfboard. Surfboard shapers have carefully protected their trade secrets and shaping a surfboard remained as mystical as the waves they were meant to ride. Today most surfboards are mass produced by machines but a few shapers still practice the trade as it originated. Many surfers have benefited from their dedication to the sport. In this free surfing video series, a professional surfboard shaper will guide you through the steps for shaping a surfboard. Learn how to create the proper workspace, sand the deck and bottom of the board, level and complete the finishing touches before glassing the board. Whether you are interested in making a surfboard for yourself before catching some waves at the beach or carrying on the surfboard shaping tradition, this free surfing video series will

Video Transcript

"Basic make up of this blank is a rigid polyurethane foam with three cedar stringers glued in. And stringers do, they give this blank rigidity. If we didn't have the stringers in here, the blank would just flex like sponge. It's pretty soft, really flexible but, without the stringers, it would be really flexible. They give it a tension, a flex pattern that's unique to each board. This one has three offsets and this is what our team riders like. They like this flex pattern. The foam is a U.S. blown foam, it's a company called U.S. Blanks. They blow the foam over in Gardena. This particular blank was cut off a C&C machine for us, which has been digitally scanned from one of our models by a company called Pro Cam, which is really like a top-notch job. I particularly like the polyurethane foam because it's easier to shape. It contours very easily. You know, blanks used to be done out of wood, which was a lot harder to work with, maybe one or two days to shape one board. Nowadays, you could do multiple boards in one day even if you're starting from scratch. It just shapes unbelievable. Styrofoam, it's coming along. We've been using it for the last couple of years. It's still more difficult to work with. It doesn't find sand out as nice as this. It's a little bit more difficult in procedures. The beads fall apart a little bit more. But this is just still, I think, the optimum for shaping surfboards."