Now we're rocking

After speaking to a mate of mine, I discovered he had some aesome tools that would come in handy. I hassled him into lending me some of them. Among them, I got a rocker profiler tool and his Al Merrick Fishcuit to copy. So I set about working out the rocker, then transfering it to the blank. It turns out the blank's rocker was pretty close, but I had to shave some off the tail and mid-nose area.

I'm afraid once the planer came out I couldn't stop, so not too many more images between this and the next.

You can see here the deck after I had planed it down to suit the rocker. I red a bit about using the planer, and knew it was important to work all around the board, not just up and down the stringer.

I planed the stringer, then took a layer of foam to match on either side, gradually working to the rails until it was one even layer of foam removal. This kept the board close to square.

You can see the finished result of this planing in the image at the bottom.

The Old Rocker

So now I need to get a rocker template. I scoured google and found this template, but I'm not so sure about it, so I drove myself off to Quiksilver in Torquay with my trusty iPhone. I grabbed a business card on the way out and marked half inch marks on it for scale.

After a lengthy chat to the boffin selling boards, I managed to lay the board flat on the carpet and take a few shots of the nose and tail rocker:





Now I've got to try to make a decent shape. While I was looking at other boards, I started to see things I hadn't even noticed before. Things like how very different rails are. From Boxy to Knife-sharp, and where than transition begins on the tail. I could spot boards with dodgy glass jobs and others. Really eye opening.