There was an interesting thread on one of the forums this week about shaping. The main question was ‘how long does it take?’ to shape a board. The response was straight forward at first but then like most threads that get attention it began to develop its own direction. It went from how long it may take someone to how many boards could be shaped by hand in a day.

Of course production shaping is not done any more. My last production shaping job doing hand shaping and cleaning up machined blanks both ended in 2005. I think production shaping now days is mainly thought of cleaning up machined blanks, which is in no way the same as shaping as many boards as you can in a day by hand.

Production shaping is really hard work. It takes a lot of physical stamina as well as strong focused mental attention. It’s one thing to do hard physical work and another to work on something that is mentally demanding. But, doing something that requires both?

Basically what happens in the production environment is you focus in on all your moves… a hand and motion thing. At the same time you concentrate on what moves to make, how much or how little of a move you need to make at a certain stage of your process with what tool and or abrasive. But, you can’t just go hacking away. You have to have the completed picture of what you want to make in your head before your first move. And know when, how and where to make any move you make.

After shaping hundreds and hundreds of boards you begin to develop a procedure that you follow, continually getting more efficient. Eventually almost everything you do in the process becomes second nature… you literally don’t think about what you’re doing, you just do it. The ultimate robot… arms and legs the mechanism controlled by your brain, the computer. The interesting thing is you get very good at repetition, as good as any machine.

There is no demand for the production shaper now, and never will be again. So where does that leave me? With the knowledge, experience and ability to shape any kind of surfboard I’d like. All be it in a much more relaxed mode.

D.R.

The ultimate test for me as a production shaper was shaping a Yater spoon in 2 hours. I got going at such a good clip that I was tossing my block plane from hand to hand. When I saw this short video I laughed out loud!