Jim 'The Genius' Phillips on 'engineering' in surfboard shaping

"Roy, when you start one of your boards, you have your frame work that the design is built around, you engineered it before doing any thing else.
The blank is the canvas to start with, before doing anything else, I site the blank looking for any flaws in the rocker and deck lines, these are the first steps I take to engineer a shape, I go to the flaws and straighten them out and when I have two rail line curves that match, I can go on to skinning the deck.
The bottom gets the most "shaping" done to it, I bring it down to thickness first, next is thinning and rockering the tail, I move on to the nose, thin and rocker it. Each particular design has it's own thickness and rocker that is shaped for it.
I now have a blank that is to the profile I want, I drop the nose, tail and center widths on the bottom, connect the dots with the desired template and saw it out.
With the blank bottom up and laying flat, I use the planer to clean up to the outline, leaving the last foot to Surform and and doing a final looksee for any places in the outline that are not what I am after. The planer will never lie, it will plow through bumps and skip right past flat spots, but the trusty Surform can and will clean right up to the pencil line on the crookedest of outlines.
Once the outline is done, I flip the blank back over and recheck the deck lines now that it is templated, if there is a problem, I fix it now, waiting til later only causes problems in the shaping later on.
The shape has a center profile, but now I am after the bottom rail line, every blank has it's own special flaws, the opposite side of the hinge side is always thicker, I go to the thinner of the two rails, I shape a rail line profile that will blend into the center line. I caliper the thinner side and transfer those measurements to the opposite side, then shape to those dims., now the bottom is trued up nose to tail and right to left.
I always do my bottom rail bands first, get them right, feather in the rest of the planer work onto the bottom and go to the deck, repeat the same process and am left with about a half inch of an untouched bit of the original outline, this will remain until the drag of my final screen.
I don't use sanders to "finish" shape, the planer work is clean enough to have to minimally sand, with a sheet of nicely broken in # 40 grit, from there I can go directly to #120.
The entire process is, extracting the design I want, staying as close to the parameters of that design as possible, with as little forking with it to fix problems that will cause the design to change from it's original intent.
It is engineering from step one until the blank gets it's serial number on it. Taking 2 passes off the top and 2 passes off the bottom and turning rails is NOT an engineered shape, it is turn and burn, haven't got time to do it right, but someone else will do it over and better. 
I shape every day, except Sunday, for 50 years now, what I did today, is a stepping stone to do better tomorrow"
http://jimthegenius.blogspot.co.nz/