Design

Once you have your tool situation sorted, it is time to determine what type of surfboard you are going to make, including several key dimensions and design attributes that will act as guide points for you as you shape.

We could write a book (and some have) on surfboard design principles, but for the purposes of this guide, we are going to assume that you have a basic idea of what type of board you are going to make. If not, we suggest you peruse the websites of various surfboard manufacturers (Rusty, Channel Islands, Lost) and online surf magazine buyers guides (Surfer, TransWorld Surf, ESM) to get a feel for what some basic designs and dimensions are state-of-the-art.

Another no-brainer is to go to a good surf shop and take a good hard look at the boards on the rack. Check out the rockers, rail shapes, bottom contours, and measurements (usually written on the bottom stringer). Focus on boards that are right-sized for your height/weight and the wave conditions you will use the board in. Really good surf shops will have calipers and measuring tapes so you can get more important measurements like thickness at various stages of the board and width in the nose and tail. Before you know it, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what type of board you’d like to make and a pretty good feel for ballpark dimensions.

For more detailed descriptions on the key elements of surfboard design, we highly recommend you sign up for Greenlight’s design newsletters. These are pretty meaty, but they will definitely give you a better understanding of the basic design elements of surfboards and hopefully help refine your thoughts on your final design.

Before you get overwhelmed with design theory, it’s probably a good idea to mention that you should KEEP IT SIMPLE for your first few boards. Don’t go for a triple-wing swallow Bonzer on your first shot. We suggest a shape with clean lines, simple (flat or subtle vee/concave) bottom contours, and no extreme curves in rocker or outline for your first shape. Most beginner shapers choose a small-wave type design for their first board, because they are relatively simple shapes (flat and wide), and the physical consequences of an ill-designed small wave board are certainly less substantial than those of a funky Mavericks Gun.

Once you’ve chosen a certain type of shape, there are several ways to refine your idea into a concrete set of dimensions and final design:

Greenlight Templates

If you want to skip the design process entirely (no shame in this), choose one of Greenlight’s pre-made board templates and print the template out on your home printer. Greenlight has a pretty broad selection of shortboard, fish, hybrid, and longboard templates in popular sizes. All you need to do is select the shape you want, print out the template sheets on your home printer, and cut/tape the sheets together to form a full sized template.

Once you have taped/cut out the full sized template on paper, you can trace this onto Masonite, cardboard, (or a similar thin, flexible board) to make a permanent template, or you can just layout your paper template carefully on the bottom of your surfboard blank to trace the board outline directly from paper to blank.

Tracing an Existing Board

If you want to try to copy an existing “magic” board or other board that you like, you can create a template of this board by tracing its outline on a piece of Masonite or other thin, flexible board. Details on this procedure are outlined in the Making a Template section.

Custom Templates from Free Computer Software

If you want to go the more creative route and design your own shape, there are several free board design CAD programs available on the internet. The two most popular can be downloaded from boardcad.org and akushaper.com.  These programs are pretty easy to figure out after about a half-hour of playing with them. Tips and directions on using this software are available on the websites.

These programs allow you to shape the outline, rocker, and even rails and bottom contours of your board and view the board in 3D. Another great feature of these programs is that they calculate the volume of your surfboard, which is very important to determine how well the board will float and paddle.

Once you design a shape that you like in Boardcad or Akushaper, both programs allow you to print out the board outline templates in full size (at a copy center if you feel like spending the $).

On these programs, you can also print out the rocker profile in full size. This can be helpful when you are choosing blanks to make sure your desired rocker can be carved from the blank that you choose. You can even trace this rocker on the side of your blank (if it’s a rectangular blank) to give you exact guidelines when planing/sanding down the black to the proper thickness and rocker profile.

The full-sized paper templates can be used to make a permanent template on Masonite or another hard, flexible material. More details on this process are described in the Making a Template section.

Custom Templates the “Old School” Way

Before computer CAD programs, most shapers made templates using thin, flexible, long battens which were temporarily secured along a Masonite board to create a guideline to cut a suitable curve. Many shapers still use this method, as it is simple and effective.

For more details on making templates with battens, proceed to the Template section.