This will be a board for me. Blendingcurves.com alt D Shorter/wider diamond tail template. Subtle hip out the back. Blank canvas for your own personal touch. Over the years I've used several templates from blending curves and they've all been very good. I've built a couple of boards off of this template in the past. For this one I pulled down the 6'4 template. Pulled the PDF file into Adobe Indesign and arranged the sheets into a full sized template of one side of the board. Next I flipped that horizontally to make a mirror image. Merged the mirror image with the original template to create a PDF of the entire board outline. Now beings as I'm 6'1 and 50 years old I wanted the board to be a bit bigger. When I printed it I set my print driver to print the file at 105%. The net result will be a board that is 6'7 x 21 3/4. Printed the file using a blueprint machine in my office. My experience with paper templates is that you can get a lot of variation particularly when you flip it to draw your outline of the second side. The procedure I've outlined here yields a full size template and with a little math you can make the board bigger or smaller to suit your needs. Having both sides as a full template makes the paper less likely to move while drawing the outline. Blank for this will be a US Blanks 6'9R Pictures aren't very good but you'll get the idea.
Normally I would skin the blank before templating and cutting out the outline but this time I decided to do something different as I was feeling lazy. Instead of painstakingly tracing the outline I positioned my full board template on the blank, taped it down, and dusted the edges with some spray paint. A few minutes later it was ready for me to cut out the outline.
Now that I have my outline its time to clean it up. For that I use a sanding block I've made that has a fence on it that is perfectly 90* and has 60 grit adhesive backed paper on one side. This assures me that my entire outline is perfectly square to the bottom of the blank and it makes it easy to feel and correct any kinks in my outline. This is key when it comes time to cut in rail bands.
Having cleaned up the outline its time to get to work. For this one I am going to use a Skil 100 that I rebuilt the motor on, replaced the cutter & bearings and shortened the bed and added a Turbo Chute. This has become my favorite planer.
Having added rocker to the nose and tail and skinned and thinned out the blank its time to tuck the bottom edge and get to work on the rail bands. I work in a small shed but I've learned to make it work. Fancy sidelights aren't needed so long as you have some lights you can move around the shed as needed. The shadows I can create are good enough for what I'm doing. A pair of dividers, a home made Fred Tool and some drawings of some rail profiles taken off of another board for reference.
Perhaps my favorite little tool for board building is this little Wil-Kro Razor Plane. I have a couple of them. They use a standard disposable razor blades you can buy at the grocery store. You can configure the plane several different ways. My favorite being having it set up to work like a spokeshave. This thing will blow away any spokeshave for working the deck side of the nose of a shortboard. With the razor blades it is so sharp that it peels layers of foam and stringer about half the thickness of a piece of tissue paper. Try to do that with a spokeshave.
CJ, I really like the way you have width pushed forward while still keeping a shortboard-like outline. Not necessarily the widest point forward but carrying decent width under the chest and yet still having a relatively narrow nose. It looks (eyeballing) like that board is no more than 13 1/2" a foot back but manages to be 21 3/4" wide.
A few hours later here is what emerged. The blank will be painted by my daughter this week and it will be glassed next weekend.
Stumbled onto these while looking for vintage block planes on eBay years ago. They haven't been made in decades but you can find them on eBay. You can cut with it three different ways depending on how you screw it together. Very ingenious. Here is one on there now: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-WI...418213?hash=item1a982fc925:g:4t8AAOSwxFZeu~Ta
Here is a write up about that little tool on a collector website. Click on the picture of the instructions and you will understand the possible uses in board building: https://www.collectorsweekly.com/stories/269984-wil-kro-razor-planer?in=all
I made a board off of this template for myself years ago but made it even wider than the template calls for especially in the nose and set it up as a quad. That board works great but being wide in the nose it gets hung up dropping in on steeper waves. On this one I kept the outline narrower and used less concave. The new one is the same length but narrower overall. I've also put morenose and tail rocker in this one. Subtle concave to V out the last 10 inches of the tail. This one will be set up as a thruster. Probably going to use some FCS Fusion boxes in it that I want to use up. I have FCS II as well but I'll use them in boards for kids. This was was E-Poly construction before Rusty made it cool. Here are shots of the old one:
CJ i just built one used the alt D outline off blending curves but i bought eps block foam and cut it out with a hot wire and made my stringer glassed on fins but who would think Is we like twin sons of seperate mothers
40 dollars for each of the foam blocks but its a bitch to build the whole thing Hot wire cutter- fender guitar tuner,a B string and an old computer power adapter Fins i did with balsa vacuum bagged using glad ziplock bags Leach attachment is roving ,volan, and a little bit of carbon fiber
Also built 2 others both 7 11 s same way one with paulownia stringer second with just the ply Im working on no 4 but planer broke down yesterday doing my center stringer so im screwed til i get a new drive belt I was going buy some eps blanks but the shipping now is crazy for foam and over 8 ft its insane if you use block foam like i did you have to make the stringer too and theres another problem good wood for stringers over 8 ft
