So this is where we’re at now:
Our next step is to take the deck down a little. For this, let’s start with the planer. The one I’m using is this one from Wen. There are modified versions which are much more expensive but after reading around, until you get proficient with a planer, using a modified one is more likely to get you into trouble.
It’s going to take some practice to get comfortable with the planer. I keep the depth fairly low which helps with control. Making it cut deeper will allow you to go faster but it also tends to lock you into a groove if you aren’t careful. This time around, I took the dust bag off. I was expecting it to create a bigger mess but it wasn’t too bad and not having the bag saved me having to empty it often. At some point I’m going to need to rig up a way to hook up my shop vac without the hose getting in my way.
Once I’ve cut the deck as much as I feel comfortable with the planer, I move on to using my trim planer to take down the stringer and my shaping tool to even out the foam.
I like to start with the stringer 
Then take down the foam
I’m only taking the down down a little bit from the nose for this board. I’ll finish things off with some sandpaper.
Now it’s time to flip it over and work on the nose and tail until we’ve got the rocker we want. For this I will only using my plane and shaping tool. I’m not comfortable enough the planer to use that yet for this step.
Rough cut blank 
After shaping nose and tail 
Checking rocker with aluminum box tubing
Probably should have included this step with rough cutting the template but, before moving on to rails, we double check to make sure all of our dimensions look good. A shaper’s square is extremely handy here. We look for where we’re off and make marks until we hit a point where we are back on.
For this board there was a section of the tail that was off enough to worry about. This was easily corrected with the Rail Runner tool.
