The Brownfish Experiment

OK. I had so much fun working on, "My August Project," I figured it was time to do it again. This time with a real blank instead of an old beat up, delaminated longboard. This added some new experiences so far. I spent alot of time researching blanks, but in the end, just headed down to Mitch's and took the easy route. I ended up with a US Blanks 6'2A Fish blank. I'm pretty much going for something very similar to the M.A.P. 5'8" Quad Fish. I would like to improve on a few things. First being the nose rocker. I was somewhat limited last time by the shape of the prior board. I'm a pretty big believer in having some rocker in Fish, especially up by the nose. I think the speed that you lose, is made up for by the manueverability of the board. Plus, it doesn't hurt during those late drops. I'm also shooting for about 1/4" narrower and will probably pull the last 4-5" of the tail in a touch. I used the same template from my Orange Pavel Superbank (pictured in a different post below). I'm still new at this, so once again, I set the template a 1/2" too wide on both sides. This will let me work on getting my outline right, then re-templating and doing it again. This way I get to practice an outline twice on each blank. I think many new or first time shapers make thier biggest mistakes on not making perfect templates, and also not taking the time to make the outline perfect. So my first day, I templated the board, cut it out, worked on my first outline, then was done. My first outline wasn't as perfect as I wanted as my time was cut a little short. I didn't skin the blank on the first day. I didn't take pics on my second day (cause I was working while my daughter took a nap). That session I was able to skin the blank with a small rotary sander with 40 grit (still haven't used a planer, next time), thinned the blank down a bit, retemplated, and worked it down to my desired outline. So far so good. Pictures below are only from my first days work. More to come later.