![aku shaper swaylocks aku shaper swaylocks](https://i0.wp.com/www.minisimmonssurfboards.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/IMG_20130526_135915.jpg)
It sounds contradictory, but the fewer tools you apply to the blank, the better. The ultimate goal is to produce the best surfboard possible, as close to your mind’s eye plan, with the minimum amount of tooling and labor. By trying new approaches, condensing or eliminating steps or using a new tool, you will often stumble onto a better routine or improvement in technique. It’s good to deviate once in awhile, though. They’ll doggedly stick to a rigid procedure for their entire career. It’s light, has a forgiving shape, and catches waves easily.While you are grappling with the tools and the actual nuts-and-bolts of shaping a surfboard, it is a good idea to save some spare mental energy to consider what you are doing, philosophically.
Aku shaper swaylocks how to#
This board has actually turned out to be a great board for teaching little kids how to surf. Still, the boxy rails will probably prevent this board from being too responsive regardless of fins. I never tried it with really big fins (Hynson Quad) and I bet this would help some more. I messed around with fins and placement a little bit, which helped, but this still wasn’t the mush-buster I envisioned. They didn’t want to sink and so the board would stay very high on the water and react fairly sluggishly. Part of the problem seems to be the very boxy rails. It caught waves easily, but it was not as skatey and loose as I thought it would be. It didn’t really do what I had hoped, however. In the future I will try to do without the acrylic spray.Īs my first board, I was just thrilled that this board actually floated and caught waves. I don’t really like the way it turns out, and it feels like cheating and covering up a bad sand job.
![aku shaper swaylocks aku shaper swaylocks](https://www.minisimmonssurfboards.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/660A0539-1024x683.jpg)
I used the matte finish, which turned out kind of bumpy. I also did a water-based acrylic clear spray (same stuff Greg Loehr uses in his DVD) after the sanded hot coat.
![aku shaper swaylocks aku shaper swaylocks](https://i1.wp.com/www.minisimmonssurfboards.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/mini-five.jpg)
I had numerous “sand-throughs” exposing the glass weave, which required me to do a second hotcoat to seal all of the sand throughs. On the sanding side, I realized that sanding the hot-coat is actually the most challenging part of the surfboard building process. You need to make sure you have enough resin mixed to saturate the laps, and make sure you lay some down right next to the rails so you can “waterfall” it over the rails with the spreader. I was literally scraping resin off the floor trying to scrounge up enough resin to get the laps suitably saturated. On the glassing side, the biggest trouble I ran into was not having enough resin close to the rails to saturate the laps. If you can manage to have a smooth, clean outline in your blank, then your chances of a getting a good end result are substantially higher. Any bumps or dips in the outline are magnified in three dimensions once you start cutting rail bands and shaping the rails. The planer can be tricky, but it makes a clean, consistent cut and yields a better end result.Īnother lesson on the shaping side was to try to get your outline as smooth and close to 90 degrees as possible. Trying to shape a board by hand with a rasp and sanding boards will take forever and yield a pretty shoddy result. On the shaping side of things, I learned that it is important to practice and use the power planer as much as possible. Between all of these resources there are multiple methods of accomplishing the same task, so you have to trust yourself to pick the method that you feel will work best for you. I prepped by reading a bunch of shaping/glassing info on and viewing Greg Loehr’s Shaping/Glassing DVDs and Greenlight’s DVDs. This was my first board so literally everything was a first-time experience.
![aku shaper swaylocks aku shaper swaylocks](https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/images/user_pictures/picture-1023994.jpg)
Resin: Resin Research 2000 Epoxy, Fast Cure Glass: 2 layers 4 oz E glass bottom 2 layers 4 oz E glass top, with additional 4 oz tail patch.