If you could control only one of the six in the fabricating of your board. Which one would it be?
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Rocker
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Thickness
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Rails
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Fins
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Weight
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Flex
(1)
Blank (1)
Board (3)
Just my 1.874 cents
#7 the rider.
…ambrose…
My mother in law…
I don’t remember who wrote somewhere that blanks are so good today (rocker-wise) as opposed to those being produced in the stone age, that you could glass a blank right out of the mold and still have a working board.
Not so far from the truth, probably…
Number 1 is the hardest for me to get right as a novice and my biggest weakness. I’m a lifelong recreational surfer and dont worry about flex. Mike
…1)
mainly in the last 1/3
then
all other is a plus
Could we request a few words on the motivation of the choices? Like what in the rocker is critical and more so than say railshape or outline…
Of course the design is a holistic thing where all elements have to be in harmony but since some folks are singling out a specific design element, it would be insightful to know why.
thanks
And by controlling it at different points I could have the other 5.
Quote:
If you could control only one of the six in the fabricating of your board. Which one would it be?
Rocker
Thickness
Rails
Fins
Weight
Flex
Definitely the Fins… I’ve ridden some pretty craptacular shapes that ended up working because of the fins.
How about the weight and flex of your mother in law. (sorry, couldn’t help myself)
definatly the rails
thickness affects weight and flex. flex affects rocker. rails versus fins, they help and fight eachother.
what about outline.
I vote for thickness first then outline
Hey Dave,
My explanation goes something like this…
On a blank, I would always choose to be in control of the rocker if I could. Rocker, rocker, rocker!
I just had a conversation with a friend of mine the other day talking about, if I could just choose one thing to do on machine, what would it be?
My choice hands down is rocker.
But…if I were having a board built FOR ME and I could only control one thing, it would be the rails.
Personally I hate big beefy rails and boxy rails. I like a nice tapered bevel, thinner but not too sharp, not “pinched” so to speak.
Of course I am also talking about a shortboard…the answer for a longboard, mini-mal, or funboard would probably be a different story.
Just my 1.874 cents
I’d say 1. I’m spending the most time trying to take it out. Seems so much easier to put it in.
I wish I could get my hands on one of the modified Skils for a decent price. The technique of adjusting the depth during a pass to take rocker out or put it in for that matter seems like it would be more efficient than doing v cuts.
Quote:
Could we request a few words on the motivation of the choices? Like what in the rocker is critical and more so than say railshape or outline…
Of course the design is a holistic thing where all elements have to be in harmony but since some folks are singling out a specific design element, it would be insightful to know why.
thanks
ok, I’ll have a go at this question with some of my experiences. Yes design is holistic and this is an unrealistic question but a good discussion point.
Like Rooster, I put flex last and rocker most significant and hard to understand.
I once creased a board on the deck and it continued to go reasonably over a few months. I think it was rather dead in feel but performed reasonably, some of this feel may have been psychological - knowing i had a creased board under my feet was not confidence inspiring. I’ve also owned surftechs and homebuilt compsands with varying degrees of flex and they all went fine - one of my compsands in particular was very stiff. Despite what I’m saying I am addicted to the compsand “feel” - they feel light and responsive, some of this is probably the resilient nature of the flex and some perhaps the weight distribution - less weight in the core, more in the shell, but this is just a guess, and i think its more of a feel rather than performance thing.
I once took some rocker out of a clark thruster blank to try and get a bit more speed. The result was not successful. The board was reluctant to be pumped and did not drive forward when pushed into a turn.
I’ve also borrowed a Webber thruster, not quite banana rocker but large rocker - constructed in the days when Shane Herring was winning on banana rocker. This board had to be frantically pumped up and down the wave in order to maintain its speed.
I’ve managed to increase my understanding of rocker by downloading blank catalogs from Clark, US blanks and Surfblanks Australia. These catalogs give measurements at 1’ and sometimes 6" intervals. I’ve then taken measurements out of this catalog from the blank whose descriptions seems to fit what I want and on one occassion stretched a fish blank out to 6’ 6" and another occassion taken a hybrid blank and plotted the points out unchanged onto masonite. Then filled in the dots with a flexible batten to produce my own rocker template then wirecut styro blanks and tested them.
http://www.swaylocks.com/resources/detail_page.cgi?ID=742
additionally I have put a rocker stick across some of my mate’s boards and ridden them. By comparing the measurements of the boards to some of the blanks from the catalogs its possible to get a feel for whether the nose and tail rockers are high or low and whether the nose rocker is concentrated in the flip or more gradual etc and how it feels in the water. The most recent board I did this to was my mates NSP Bonga 6’ 6" - this board had lower than normal rocker in the front end and more rocker than my shortboard in the rear end - nose rocker was concentrated in the flip. This is a micro-longboard hybrid type design - it went fine but this sort of board is not my choice and its unusual outline makes gauging exactly how much the rocker influenced its performance difficult.
So although I have had good results with my home plotted rocker templates I’ve been very much relying on the experience of the famous shapers who produce blanks and using them as reference points rather than an understanding of how to design rocker from scratch.