Construction templates

A hollow wooden surfboard is built from an internal frame skinned with rail bands. The construction panel derives that frame from the board you have designed: the profile spine, the cross-frames, and the rail bands unrolled flat so they can be cut from sheet stock.

The rail bands are offset from the outline and developed flat, rather than approximated — when they curve back onto the board they meet the frame where they should.

The frame is the point of a wooden board, so it is in view the whole time you design. The 3D view opens in Frame mode: the stringer halves, the ribs and any nose and tail blocks drawn as solid timber, inside a faint outline of the board. These are the exact parts the templates cut and a kit contains.

The Frame section of the sidebar's Build tab holds the settings that decide it — rib placement and spacing, stringer and rib thickness, deck and bottom skin thickness, and the nose and tail blocks. Change one and the 3D frame updates. The same settings carry through to the cutting templates and to an order.

Stringer & rib thickness

The ply thickness of the spine and of the cross-frames, set separately. Each part's half-lap slots are cut to fit the part that slides into them, so a thicker stringer widens the ribs' slots and vice versa. Nose and tail block plates use the rib thickness.

Stringer in two halves

The stringer is always cut in two, so a kit fits an Australia Post parcel. The split sits midway between two rib slots, near the middle of the length, and is joined by a round puzzle joint at mid-height that keeps the halves in line while the glue sets. Joint corners are rounded to the bit radius when slot-corner relief is on, so a router can cut them. The cutting list shows each piece's length.

Deck & bottom skin thickness

How far the frame is inset under each skin, set separately for the deck and the bottom, so both finished skins land on your designed surface.

Rib placement

Where the ribs go. By spacing (the default) sets them a fixed distance apart, working out from the middle of the board; Even count spreads a chosen number between the end margins; From cross-sections puts one at each cross-section you drew in the editor, which on most boards is only a few.

Nose & tail blocks

Solid blocks at each end where a frame would be impractical.

Templates are true size: tool offsets (kerf) are applied in your CAM or laser software, not here. Slots are cut to the mating part's thickness plus a small fit clearance.

A round router bit cannot cut a sharp inside corner, so a slot cut on a CNC leaves a radius that stops the mating part seating. Set Slot corners to add relief at every inside slot corner, sized from the bit diameter:

Sharp (laser)

No relief — square corners, for laser cutting.

Dogbone (CNC)

A relief circle on each corner's diagonal.

T-bone (CNC)

A relief circle pushed sideways into the slot wall, keeping the slot floor — where the half-lap bears — fully intact.

If a part would come out too small or too fragile to cut sensibly, the panel warns rather than silently producing something unusable.

Turn on Nest to material sheets to pack the parts onto sheets of stock or your machine's bed. Pick a preset — full, half or quarter ply sheet, or a laser bed — or enter a custom size, and set the edge margin and the gap between parts (allow at least the bit diameter when routing). Parts can rotate 90° to fit.

The preview steps through the sheets. With All sheets selected, the DXF or SVG download holds every sheet side by side; select one sheet and the download holds just that sheet, ready to send to the machine. Sheet outlines are written as grey guides that are never cut or etched. Packing works on each part's bounding rectangle.

The cutting list enumerates every part with its dimensions.

DXF and SVG files use colour to tell your laser or CNC software what to do:

Red — cut

Part outlines and slots (DXF layer CUT), and lightening holes on their own layer (CUT_INNER) so they can be cut before the outline frees the part.

Black — etch

Reference lines (centrelines, rib stations, fin positions) and each part's name, etched inside the part (layer ETCH). Names use a single-line font so they engrave as one clean stroke. Either can be switched off with Etch part names and Etch reference lines.

Grey — not machined

Sheet outlines (GUIDE) and the paper-template notes beside each part (NOTES). Turn these layers off in your machine software.

DXF

For a laser or CNC router.

SVG

For plotters and general vector tooling.

PDF

Tiled across paper at 1:1 with overlap and cut marks, for tracing by hand. See exporting for how tiling works.

If you would rather not cut the parts yourself, Order kit in the toolbar orders them CNC cut in Paulownia, to the board you have designed. See ordering a kit for how it works and how kits are priced.