Shape Scribeless
Why you should stop shaping with a scribe:
The scribe (a woodworking tool used to mark non-proportional measurements) is, for the surfboard shaper, a superfluous tool that has gained popularity via social media as more of a prop than a functional aspect of the shaper’s toolbox. Unfortunately, our industry’s shaper/influencers will post just about anything to grab (and mislead) your attention.
The scribe is redundant to the surfboard shaper because of its inability to define features that scale from zero to an apex and back to zero: rail bands or tuck, for example. While scribes can surely be adjusted to a variety of measurements, once tightened they hold that one measurement, which is NOT how we shape surfboards.
The whole purpose of a rail band is to scale proportionally from one measurement at the nose (typically zero unless there’s a beak), to the apex of either the rail or the tuck, and then back to zero as you approach the tail.
If you need to make longer marks to guide your planer along a bottom tuck (no judgement!), then there is a better way to do so! Use your template from the design you’re shaping or make a template slightly scaled down in width to accommodate your banding. Trace that [at various stages] to guide your bands.
My dad was a rough dude. The first time I brought a scribe into his shaping room was the last! His insistence being that our long, straight tools (Surforms, sanding blocks, planers etc) tend to cut consistent lines. They make their own marks! Train your eye to follow those!
For more, be sure to check out the video below.
Instead of using a scribe, use a square at the wide point to mark the rail apex as well as a buffer/nipple around it. You should also mark the amount of rail tuck in the same fashion. These marks are really all you need. Slowly take planer or Surform passes as you move toward these marks. Click here to read up more on banding rails.
Shown here the rail apex with buffer marks around it and the rail tuck above. Here you see two rough rail passes arriving at the tuck mark anf the first buffer mark above the rail apex. The bands are their widest at this point and scale down to zero at the ends. Lines drawn with a scribe will not accomplish the same scalability.
This photo is a good example of how rail bands scale towards/at the ends of the outline, especially towards the nose (in this case) where the template narrows more agressively. As a side note, the recycled polyol blank in the background was, in my opinion, terrible. I haven’t touched another since this photo was taken.
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