| “Many people felt that machine shaping was going to be the death of the custom surfboard, that computers and machines would just spew our perfect board after perfect board. The reality couldn’t have been further from the truth!” When the first shaping machines came along there was a lot of fear that things would change, and not for the better, that the traditional skills and craftsmanship would be replaced. In reality the boards have got better and the craftsmanship remains, it just has slightly different focus. In the past a shaper had to be pretty damn good at working a planer and creating a symmetrical board from a hunk of foam. Now the shaper has to be able to interpret 3D models, and to understand how these convert these into actual shapes. Finally these have to be finessed into the actual board. A heavy handed finisher can ruin a board as easily as they used to with a pass too many with the planer. What machine shaping has really done is shift the emphasis from correcting the faults in a blank to create a good board, to the design of a functional shape in the first place. A twisted blank is no longer an excuse, the machine sorts all that out – now the design has to be good because that’s what the machine produces. The result is that today's boards ride better than their predecessors and better still if you have a board you really like, the possibility of having another one with the same characteristics is hugely improved. |