posts: 8712
Data license: Public Domain
This data as json
| post_id | thread_id | thread_title | post_number | author_username | post_date | post_date_iso | post_body |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8712 | 119 | questioning the process | 10 | silversurf | Apr 25, 2007 | 2007-04-25T04:40:53-0400 | It's interesting that a lot of us who started surfing in the '60s still have this romanticized idea of what a "custom" board was then, and should be today. Back then, the big shops were producing boards by the hundreds, and it wasn't the guy whose name was on the lam who took that big slab of foam and mowed it down to its final shape. Heck, it wasn't even the top ghost shapers in the shop doing that. Usually, it was the shop rat, the young guy who wanted to learn to shape, who roughed out the blank. So which is better -- a barely trained 17 year old carving away before the master shapers came in for the day or a machine that is tuned and set to shave just enough and leave the final skill stuff to the master. The art is in the details, and that's what the great shapers do -- the foil in the rail line, the amount of V in the tail, the curve of the concave. That's where the skill comes in. So if a machine gets the blank to that point, and then Gene steps in, hey, I'm cool with that. |