{"database": "surfing", "table": "posts", "rows": [["223141", "11440", "Molded, Reverse Engineered, Handshaped by One Only...WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU?", 59, "Bruce Fowler", "Oct 12, 2021", "2021-10-12T12:43:47-0400", "shapewright said: \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n            Before moving back to San Diego an east coaster bought a used machine, he promptly scanned Lost, Rusty, CI popular short board models. That's wrong, I've had to give potential customers the walk sign, especially when asking  for a DT in the Pink or a neck beard, \" I'm not Donald or Al\", get one of theirs.\n\n\n\nI finished thousands of machine cuts while Channin was still active, Greg Nolls, Hansen's, Surfboards Hawaii, Channin, never enough shaping rooms or shapers to fill the bays like in the hey days.\n\n\n\nMatt Calvani with the machine accurately reproduces each model at their shop, same with the other companies.\n\n\n\nIn the 60's each shaper did the models, but each had a personal tweak they added.\n\n\n\nThe machine is just a tool, scanning someone else's work is just plain wrong, I don't know what Bruce went through during the learning phase, but I was browbeat by experienced shapers until I became good at my craft, Gene went through the same gauntlet.\n\n\n\nWe learned to be competent craftsmen, hand built or finishers\n        \n\n\nClick to expand...\n\n\n\n\nThank you for sharing that.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTo answer what \"you don't know what I went thru\".\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLike Al Merrick, I am totally self taught as a shaper.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAs a kid, I still had it in me that making a surfboard was a creative pursuit and I wanted my 'art' to be original.\n\n\n\nPlus I was born & grew up in Santa Barbara, and it wasn't like I could easily go get mentored by Yater or someone else in town.  There weren't a lot of guys making boards anyway:  Yater, Jeff White & Brian Bradley (Owl), John Eichert, and a smidge later, Doug Roth.  There was also some guy making hideous pop outs called \"Borm\" in the old lemon factory that one day Haakenson would inhabit and glass all the Channel Islands during Merrick's meteoric rise to fame.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI used battens (flexible strips of wood) after plotting my points the full length of a blank of what I thought a good surfboard outline should look like. I anchored it in the best way I could to hold the curve then scribed it with a carpenter's pencil. Then I cut out the blank.  After a few tries, I got something that was less than horrible, and my dad bought me some masonite or whatever it was for me to trace my curve creating my first template.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nForget even knowing anything about rocker or a rocker stick, contour calipers for rails, or even hearing of a power planer.  It was surform, sanding block, and block planes all the way baby! (Probably a good way to learn when I think back. \"Always block your work\". ;-)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLater on, when I got into repairing everybody's surfboards instead of getting zits from laboring over French fry baskets at some greasy spoon, I started my first pragmatic move of ripping off good shapers outlines by tracing their work so I would have some good \"templates\".\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI learned by emulation.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI copied the stuff I rode that worked good.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMy biggest influence was when I rode John Bradbury's \"Creative Freedom\" surfboards and he was like a GOD in Santa Barbara and surrounding areas.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHe had come from Yater, who called JB \"the best glasser I ever had\".  In those early days, I rode Owl's (including. a7'11\" V bottom shaped by Tom Hale), a 7'4\" Yater \"Pocket Rocket\" and many magic JB's...... this was after growing up on a busted up Greg Noll that was given to me after flying off a car and getting 50-60 dings, a broken off nose and no skeg.  I shaped, well, reshaped what had been a primo 10'2\" into my first 8'2\" BF sled. I followed that board w/a Xmas Doug Roth & Yater's  & eventually a Hobie that I bought in Santa Cruz. They told me it was a Hobie Lightweight - it had three 1/4\" Balsa Stringers with Black Glue 6\" apart, was super white because it had this glass they called \"Silane\". Removable skeg with big bolt thru the deck. It only weighed 23 lbs!  It was a \"Semi Speed Shape\" some guy named Dick Brewer shaped it.  I had a good eye, even back then).\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBack to my first shape, I was eight years old, it was 1959, and my mom took my brother & I to a fabric store because we didn't know where to get fiberglass or resin.  The guy sold us this light brown stuff and said in his Oklahoma accent \"yp, uh yeah, I think this is fiberglass, either way it'll work.... oh, as far as resin, that's easy, just go up a block on the other side of the street you'll see \"Pep Boys\", they sell repair kits for these guys fixing their Corvettes, those cars are made out of fiberglass.  So we scored big time at Pep Boys and when we told the sales guy how many holes the thing had, he sold us \"the BIG can\" of Bondo.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMy brother made a laminated wood skeg in his 8th grade woodshop at school. It turned out really good and he admitted his shop teacher did more of it than he did.  We figured out how to sink the thing into the board, and we were done!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nExcept the thing looked like a hideous zebra or giraffe so my dad, who had worked for Fuller Paint suggested we pick a color and he bought some enamel and loaned us one of his good paint brushes as long as we promised to clean it good.  We painted everything except the fin, because it was the best thing about the whole board.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI got my first right slide at the \"Sand bar\" aka SB Sandspit at the harbor.  After riding the soup straight in all the time, I accidentally took off at an angle and leaned (or maybe I was falling) into the wave face. I felt like I WAS GOING A MILLION MILES AN HOUR and was hooked ever since!\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAfter the summer, it was back to school. I sold my board to a friend for $8 and it broke into three pieces the first time he rode it.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nWhy did I stay with surfing?\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI think it was by the time I got to junior high school and the thing was to peroxide your hair.  I did that, but that made me even more of a target for the upper classman because I lived on a ranch in the mountains above Santa Barbara. So that became a reason for all these older guys to name me \"hillbilly surfer\" screaming at me when they saw me in the halls between classes \"HEY! DO YOU SURF!!!???\"  Then they would all laugh, or get a buddy to bump into me, push my books out of my hands......\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nALL THAT BULLYING JUST GAVE ME MORE DRIVE TO BECOME SOMETHING BETTER THAN THEM."]], "columns": ["post_id", "thread_id", "thread_title", "post_number", "author_username", "post_date", "post_date_iso", "post_body"], "primary_keys": ["post_id"], "primary_key_values": ["223141"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.6162859990581637, "license": "Public Domain"}