So… i pulled the trigger on a used shortboard and been stoked with the change coming from a bigger funboard, paddling and catching waves is way easier, really rised the bar for me.
Despite the funboard being bigger, I must agree with what some people said here, bigger is not always better.
Board dims: 6’4" x 20 1/2 x 2 3/4" , attaching a pic at the end.
Long story short: last year my intention was to build a balsa sandwich shortboard, not satisfied with what was available at surfshops and didn’t want to pay high $ for a custom from a shaper that would use the same materials that break etc. So this used board was for sale at reasonable price and bought it, when I get a decent board made by me will eventually sell it again.
Im about to start building my board with EPS/Balsa/glass and was thinking about using the board as a reference but reducing its size since despite paddling and catching waves is good, planning feels bumpy, I think it is something related to the big volume of the board for my weight (80 Kg), it feels so bumpy that some times my front foot got out of the board with the consequent wipeout when going for speed
When trying to do rail to rail, it was hard to maneuver, it felt like the board wanted to go straight only (using GMB-5 FCS which should be fine for my weight)
And… duck diving can be made but not so deep so getting in the line up sometimes is hard.
Having the three last things in mind I wanted to improve the board for me
As the SUPERbrand website advertise, there should be a single to double concave, took a rigid ruler and placed it in the bottom, but the concave wasn’t there, tryed several parts of the bottom, nothing.
Despite the concaves aren’t there, how shorter should I try to go?
Bert Burger propses thin foils, wide boards, concaves deck and flat bottoms and do the morphlex thing. On the other hand, at sunova website there are models that are not than thin and actually have bottom concaves, so…? At first the idea of a sandwich construction attracted me because of durability but after long nights reading about flex, I was catched and I want to try to replicate something of it. on the other hand after visiting bert’s website it kindda confusing now that he IS using bottom concaves.
Moreover, saw a post on other forum regarding a magic carpet from sunova with BOTH deck and bottom concaves. My guess? subtle bottom concave and the deck concave is there to help the flex and increment the bottom concave when flexing, but just a guess. I think for the effect it is also necessary to overlap the deck skin on the rails but not the bottom skins so the deck force will be transferred to rails and rails will flatten and push to the middle of the board the bottom skins, because bottom skins have this subtle concave, they will increase the bottom concave because it is the easier path (like it would go the other way but you added the sublte concave to help directing the force)
I think that using thicker deck skins and thinner bottom skins also helps to this morphing thing, like 3 mm deck, 1.5 mm bottom.
My guess on diagonal sheet placement?:
If put on deck skin it wil help transfer better the force to rails
If put on bottom skin it will help reduce the flex
But maybe not, since the magic sheet positioning is parallel both deck and bottom to centerline
At this point the name of this post was: Concaves advertised but not there! or at least cant seem them… but kind of got out off topic myself so changed it to actual name; like re firing up the discussion about sandwich construction and flex
cheers
rodrigo
