Shapeshifting – The art of hand-making surfboards
Design and creation: The outline
The outline of a board – its plan shape or template – determines the overall configuration of the board's surface area. A designer may settle on a fundamental overall outline then incorporate specific elements into the outline (nose and tail configurations, and width throughout) to tune it up. Distinct overall outline configurations include predominantly 'parallel' outlines, predominantly 'continuous curve' outlines, or 'hybrid' outlines where parallel and continuous curves are integrated. Alternatively, outline may be determined by the configuration of specific elements of the board: its tail (roundtail, roundpin, pintail, squashtail, swallow tail); its nose (shortboard nose, full nose, single fin nose, longboard nose); or its relative width (narrow board, wide board). How these features go together determines the outline of a board.
Jay believes certain nose designs work with specific types of boards, while tail shape can vary a lot more in the same model of board.
"Depending on the aggressiveness of the rider and the size of the wave, one type of tail will allow the board to cling to the face of a wave, while another design will be a lot more 'skatey' to turn."
While the intended use of a board determines to a great extent the outline, shapers differ in their preferences – some prefer wide, fulsome curves, others like narrow thin boards. Nose and tail shapes are the signature of a shaper and add a style or look to a shape. A shaper will gradually accumulate a library of templates of cardboard or wooden sheet, which, like tailor's patterns, are used to draft curves. Whether or not a shaper makes templates using curves he or she has created anew or borrowed from others, every arc and line on a template descends from the past, sired by preceding shapers, ultimately all the way back 1,500 years to the forests of Hawaii, where the first surfboards were created. Jay says he is constantly adjusting his templates, refining them and smoothing out their curves.
Taking care to include the three reference points marked on the blank, Jay moves a set of templates around on the bottom of the blank like a set of draughtsman's French curves to create the outline of the new board, and when he is satisfied with the smoothness of the line, he cuts around it with a handsaw and cleans up the result with a Surform tool. The elegance of the board starts to emerge. It's time to begin work on the bottom of the board.
