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All by hand in my garage, start to finish.
Have a look at blending curves. They've got nice templates. Small wave boards are a good place to start and a lot of people go for a glass on twin keel fish for their first. They work decent without much concave or just flat. Mini simms are common first boards too. You'll get a lot of opinions though. I like concave. It's not too difficult. Go slow, use hand tools, have proper lighting. That's the key. Worry about rocker the most. Bad rocker will ruin a board quicker than anything else. Choosing the right blank is key so you don't have to extensively modify the rocker, which is hard as a beginner. The third version of my small wave board used a new blank that wasn't available for V1 or V2, and V3 is so much better.
Volume is blown out of proportion in my opinion. Yes, it's important, but people who choose solely on volume are misguided. Volume is a product of the other parameters; foil, rocker, concave, rails etc... Two boards can be 30 liters, but one can have a razor thin tail and thicker mid section while the other can have a more even distribution. They'll surf differently, so just seeing they're both 30L tells you nothing. Achieving a good foam distribution is more important than nailing 28.1363849L rather than 29L. In fact a common noob mistake is poor foiling. I did it on my first. The tail was too thick and that hurts performance. You're gonna notice errant foiling more than an extra liter or two.
