Holy Crap..It looks like a surfboard!!!

So today was a breakthrough. I took off all the clamps and began the shaping process. My goal when I finished today was just to get everything trimmed up and get a rough sand on it to remove excess glue, bumps, gaps, etc...I first trimmed the top and bottom planks using a jigsaw. This was a somewhat nerve racking experience when trimming the top plank since I was holding the saw at a weird angle and trying to keep it from eating into the rail. I erred on the side of leaving too much material. I followed this up using the hand plane to remove most of the remaining material on the top planks until they were close to the rail strips. The bottom planks I trimmed flush with the rail.

It is difficult to tell where to stop when shaping the top planks to meet the rail. There ends up being a little gap as you get closer to the rail. I was concerned because it was hard to tell if I just didn't glue well enough and this was an area that pulled away, or if I just needed to sand some more. In the end, I think I did a little of both.

I did have some areas where it was obvious I did a crappy job of clamping. This was mainly due to running out of clamps and using the PVC pipe clamps on the tail. Many of them had become stretched out and just didn't have the pressure I wanted. You can notice in the picture there are clamps holding the tail together since I decided to squeeze more glue into the gap and re-clamp it for the night.

Once every thing was smooth, I stepped back and smiled. It finally looked like a surfboard. Damn that is going to be fun to ride.

Good news, most of the split in the top planks was removed when I shaped everything down. It split where the excess hung over. There is a slight mark towards the nose where the glue is filling a tiny gap, but you can barely notice.

Next I'll dismantle the rocker table and build it into a shaping stand to shape the rails and then to glass the board. I can almost see the finish line.