I wanted a pintail shortboard (ish). My roommate at the time had an old Rick (shaped with Brewer for a while) 8' pintail semi-gun. Wide point way forward, hard rails on the back third of the board. Overall I had some really fun waves on the board bt it was coming to pieces. So, I sought out something similar for my first shape.
I shaped mine as a copy of a bing lotus:
But, only having seen them on the web, I tried to come up with measurements using illustrator, the above photo, and some playing around. (yes, I probably went about this 180 degrees opposite what many would do. I'm left brained what can I say).
I took the scale measurements from illustrator, and put them on brown paper every foot along the board's length. I then used a piece of doweling to connect the dots. The problem with wood is that it flexes differently depending on how the grain is aligned. So, I wound up with some flat spots in the template that you can see in the finished board. Whatever.
I settled on something like 7'2" x 22 1/2" with 18" in the nose and 16" in the tail or some such. Thickness of 2 7/8". It's got float! Went with 2x 6oz deck and 1x 6 ox bottom with a fin patch. Rails were meant to be egg up front and down in the back ~1/5 of the board to really hard at the tail. I came up with pinched everywhere with down in the back 1/6th and not much in the way of hard rails anywhere. Oh well.
I went with a standard PU blank in a fish-like rocker and template.
One day I just went at it. Wilko was hanging around, and gave me pointers when I needed them but also (amazingly) knew when to shut up.
I sawed and shaved and scrubbed.
For the glassing, I decided to go with epoxy after reading a lot about it on Swaylocks. Chose bright yellow. Wilko showed up right as I mixed my first batch and showed me some tricks and just stood by and gave encouragement as I went about it. The epoxy did exactly what it was supposed to do and, aside form the odd moth it came out pretty good.
Cut lapped, glassed more, trimmed, glossed then sanded. Went with 400 grit on the bottom and 200 grit finish on the deck. Couldn't be bothered to take it to mirror anywhere.
Here's the result:
A little weird. Fin's a bit too far back, box is kinda crooked, but, I've had some really fun waves on it. When she goes, she really goes. One fall I'll bike it down the coast.
Not too many stories, but there's my process.
Hope it's coming along.
