Tricks to Making a Surfboard Template

Shaping your own surfboard is easy…said no one ever! It’s true, that with practice you can refine your shaping skills but there is always room for improvement and progression. In the 48 years that Fiberglass Hawaii has been doing business we’ve been asked the question, “How do I make a surfboard template?” about one million times, give or take a few. Hand shapers have been known to spend several hours making a template. There are two reasons shapers spend the extra time on making a good template. Reason number one is that the template is the foundation of the board. If your template has kinks, wavy lines or doesn’t flow properly then your shape is doomed from the beginning. When you look at a board your eyes follow the outline, the shape of it and the way the curves bend and flow together seamlessly. Reason number two is that once you have a good template, chances are you’ll keep it around for the rest of your shaping career. Sure, you might not use it every day but, when you need to modernize that outline or make another “magic board” then, you’ll be able to grab old faithful out of the pile and get to work. Check out this video along with these other tutorial videos on some of the Fiberglass Hawaii brand tools that are used in making this template.