My first build

General Discussion
1

My first official shaped board 5’6" x 20 3/4" x 2 1/8" fish, XPS foam, cloth inlay, epoxy, used sone 10oz cloth for some extra heft. Ready to glass on fins and take it out to test performance.

Got impatient and used pieced together fiber cloth instead of a whole piece for the deck and didnt sand out the seams fully, but hey the deck gets waxed so no big deal, it’ll hide.

I gave it a super nice concave on the bottom to channel some water pressure to the tail reminescent of the RUSTY single concave venturi curve that i love on my heckler model, so i went chasing that. 

Secondly, i reshaped an old “GFORCE” 7’ into this cool cloth inlay sorta fish sorta double round pin tail monstrosity shes 6’5" now. I’m dubbing her the coffee bean.(sorry abot the dust)

Thirdly, I figured my first fish would get lonely so I shaped her out a little sister. same cloth inlay just a different focus pattern, 5’3" x 20 1/2" x 2 1/2". A little smaller but a little fatter. have yet to glass currently I’m patching up foam and doing minor adjustments to the shape.

Any pointers are heavily appreciated. Everything has been done by feel alone except for the out line template. No other marks on the foam to follow totally freehand. 

https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/IMG_0184.jpg(image larger than 8 MB)

https://swaylocks7stage.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/7BA547D1-A550-4220-AE3D-201F9729F764.jpg(image larger than 8 MB)

2

You have definitely made a good start.  Those all turned out better than my first boards.   

3

Thank you so much, I’ve really found a passion in this and aim to keep making the nicest boards I can!

4

Keep it going.  Just remember;  How they surf is what matters.  I’ve glassed some ugly surfboards.  New boards that looked like rejects.  Whenever I did that I sold them for just enough to recoup the cost of the materials I had in them.  I had a guy come up to me on Maui once and tell me he rode this three stringer that I had shaped for someone else.  A couple of years later it fell into his hands and he surfed it at the Bay.  He was a pretty good young shortboarder.  He said it was the fastest longboard he had ever been on.  I was always kind of embarrassed by that board and figured it probably was a Dog with a capital D.  Its shape first.  You’ll find that In order to make the “nicest boards you can”;  You will eventually have to leave "free sculpting " behind and learn the craft of “Precision Shaping”.  When you do you will find that a good dark pencil and a tape measure are indispensable.  (among other things).  Lowel