Shapeshifting – The art of hand-making surfboards
Design and creation: The rails
The thickness and shape of the outside edges of a board, its rails, determine its sensitivity and flotation. Generally, the bottom edge near the tail is hard-angled to help water release from the edge of the board. The easier water can release from the board, the faster the board will go. In the middle of the board, rails are softer, more rounded so they won't catch or dig into a wave. Harder edges will give a board crispness.
"The rails are where a board comes alive. It's my favourite part of shaping a board; it goes from being a slab to a living thing," says Jay.
After marking out a series of bevels using a marking gauge, Jay uses the planer to cut a series of long flat bands that twist along the length of the bottom surface of the board. In the low-angled light of the shaping bay, the bands flow together like the lapstrake planking on a Viking longboat. The process is repeated on the deck. Then Jay uses a foam-backed sanding block to blend the bevels into each other, and into the nose, tail, bottom and deck. Curves flow together and disappear into each other.
"It's all about hands. You've got to move your hands so that you are following an endless curve – you have to roll your hands and move them in a three-dimensional movement."
Jay frequently hefts the board from its rack to sight down the rails, and he uses his fingertips and palms a lot, to feel out what he can't see.
Only a surfer can be a shaper; what's more, says Jay, "the important thing is that you have to know different waves, not just surf."
To visualise how a board will perform, how it will travel across a wave, shapers must draw on their surfing experience and link the shape of a board to specific feelings and recalled experiences. Good shapers imitate the flow of water across a board with their fingers, translating what they feel into a picture in the mind's eye of how water will flow over the surface.
Jay describes shaping as a "flow thing". When it's going right, shaping involves intense concentration that has a feeling of timelessness about it and a near-total lack of self-awareness. After checking his measurements in the nose, middle and tail to make sure they are still accurate and that the board is symmetrical, Jay pencils in the dimensions of the board near its rocker and signs his work. In the low light of the shaping bay the board glows and has the soft curves of a snow bank. At this stage the board is "roughed out" – the shaping is largely finished, and everything that follows is more or less cleaning up the blank for glassing, 'finish work', as shapers call it. While the shaper's craftsmanship shines from the complete board, his mastery, his understanding and control of design components is visible in the board's roughed-out state.
It's important to know when to stop, Jay says – when to down tools and resist the temptation to make one too many adjustments.
The mechanical properties of a board – its toughness and its durability – are determined by the properties of the core and skin it is built from. A designer/shaper must arrange his chosen materials to give the board the best possible compression, flexural, impact, shear, tensile, and thermal strengths, while considering its overall strength-to-weight ratio. The density or mixture of densities of a board's foam core affect its mechanical properties, notably its flex. Increasing the number of fibreglass layers in the skin or using a heavier grade of cloth increases a board's resistance to dents and overall rigidity against flexing under stress. Jay does his own glassing, but some shapers contract out the job to other specialists.
