Barnfield does Fish Boards??

General Discussion
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Quote:
Aloha Bill:

I know this is off topic but my buddy and I are making 13’+ fishing surfboards with outboard motor mounts. I know that Steven Ing use to make them but someone told that you made a few great ones yourself. He added that your fishing boards have a great rocker line and rode really nice. If you did make them, what can you tell rookie who is making his first EPS/epoxy fishing board.

I do appreciate any insights you can provide.

Mahalo,

Dennis

PS: Whatever happened to Steven Ing?

Aloha Dennis

Hope you don’t mind me sticking this into a new thread. Yes I did a few Fish Boards. I made them with extruded syrofoam cores with Epoxy (Epic, I think) fiberglass skins, including the motor mounts. Other boards I had seen made with the beaded styrofoam severely delaminated from the punding they take when bouncing over chop at high speed. if you do them in beaded foam, I suggest you make a sandwich construction, at least on the deck.

The blanks were custom made with rockers to my spec. It required segmenting the foam into blocks and building in the nose rocker in pieces as the foam didn’t come thick enough to hotwire the rocker out of one solid block. The blanks were were about 4 feet wide and 14’ long and around 6" thick. This is all from memory, I would have to look up the orders to know for sure. Nose Rocker was 12" tail about 1-2". The rocker accelerated into a significant flip in the Nose. Finished boards were 45" wide, 13’6" long, 5 1/2" thick. Slight Vee throughout, heavy in the nose area. Full Boxy rails.

As I recall they were pigmented lams, pinlined and fully glossed and polished on the bottoms and rails, with textured decks. Used Greg’s “ReDeck” non skid product I think Including various inserts for tie downs etc. They were light, fast and durable. That was about 15 years ago or so and I hear they are still being used.

Sadly, I don’t think I took any pictures of them finished or under construction. They were sweet. I think my price back then was about $3,000.00 each

If you have other questions feel free to ask. They are hugely difficult to make so be prepaired for a lot of work. Have plenty of space to do it in as they take a long time and are not easy to move around. They are best done with two laminators and two squeeges working as fast as you can. It is a lot of real estate to cover before the resin goes off.

They are also very dangerous to use. Make sure you have a kill switch always tied to your wrist in case you fall off. Maybe you know this, but one guy got run over by his own board and the propeller chopped up his face. Not to mention the long swim home if you fall off and the engine keeps running.

Good Luck

Someone told me once what was up with Stephen, but I don’t remember now.

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Re-dek … haven’t thought about that product in years. Got righteously ripped of on that deal. I partnered with a marketing company which took the product (our invention) to another company and had it copied. A lousy copy at that. They stole the name too which was mine. Fortunately windsurfing has died so the product is dead now. Karma. The only way I could look at it in the end was that I made good money on Re-Dek for the 10 years it was ours. All in all that product was still a positive. If I had been real dependant on that product it would have really hurt but as it was we were fortunate to move past the whole incident pretty unscathed. Won’t be doing business with those guys again though. They also tried to knock off our epoxys. Made a bad copy and called it 2000 so people would think we had something to do with it. Sleezballs.

I also built a fishboard and if I ever build another I’ll use 2# density foam with Coremat in the laminate… probably 2 mil. You can get the foam from one of the foam companies in full size so you don’t have to glue pieces together. I used a piece of 3/4 inch marine ply for the transom which gave me a good mount for the motor. Mine also sailed and I actually sailed it way more than anything else. I also used Re-Dek on the deck. Today I’d look for the material they use for traction pads. You can find it in large sheets and just glue it on. Better tha Re-Dek for sure. Also make the hull shape more like a power boat than a surfboard. In other words plenty of nose rocker and not too much tail rocker … at all.

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speaking of tail rocker . in the boats we used to race , if there was the slightest amount of tail rocker , the tail would constantly be pulling down , then letting go , continuously .

the effect was when up and planeing , the nose would be slapping the water non stop , just bounce , bounce , bounce , when we ran flat tails they were better , but the best and fastest ones had reverse rocker , as the water realeased it lifted the tail up , and pushed the nose down , but because of the nose rocker and the air getting trapped underneath as the boat moved , the nose couldnt touch the water , so it glided along like it was running on a fine cushion of air …

we found this out by mistake during a 3 day race …

after the first day our boat was smashed to bits on the rocks , so that night i had to do a virtual rebuild of the rails and tail , that left the tail with reverse rocker from the build up plus a light concave through the bottom …

the next day we were passing boats , that were previously passing us the day before , we were mystified …

we got more damage , so that night i had to build it up even more , because of the height difference at the tail and rails i blended it in over a greater area …

one the 3rd day we were going faster again , like we were flying with just the prop and the very edges of the bottom all around the tail touching …

so flat or reverse tail rocker , makes perfect sense when you have a motor on the back …

regards

BERT

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Hey Bert

Do you have a picture of those kinds of boats?

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check the thread on fishing boards …

stringer for fishing board ? something like that , ive posted about 8 photos on that thread …

they are 10 to 13 ’ by 48" wide , generally 4" thick with walls for more support …

regards

BERT

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Yea Bert, we did the same thing in sailboards in regards to rocker doing the reverse tail camber. We’d do it out of bondo so we could tune the board right on the beach. Worked great. We tried that in boards as well and that also works. Again we did it with bondo and tuned the rocker at the beach with a block and some 180 wet and dry.

The fish board I built had 0 tail rocker and as I wrote above was mostly sailed. In about 18 knots it would start to plane and then it just screamed. Really fun on broad reaches in swells … REALLY FUN! Took my kids for these maxed out speed runs in 30-40 knots if wind, my older daughter out on a trapese. This is when she was 11 or 12. Both are in their 20 now and they still talk about that. Disney’s never made a ride that’s ever even come close.

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Probably my last dozen boards (now a while ago) had that reverse characteristic shaped into the tail, among other things.

Helped the board with the effects you mentioned, much better glide, like taking the brakes off and greasing the bearings.

Definitely a step forward, and will eventually be understood and emerge as a notable design feature.

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Mahalo Bill:

We cut the blanks out of a block of EPS that was 24" x 27" x 14’ using a hot wire cutter. We are in the process of gluing up the 1/4" marine ply stringers. I had an old 14’ PU fish board by Steven Ing. I like the rockers on the your boards better. I will use your suggestion of sandwich construction.

We want to use our fish boards to do some light fishing. We really like to use it to get to the barrier reef breaks surrounding Kaneohe Bay when the north swells are in and the Kona winds are blowing.

Not to many people seen a motorized fishing surfboard. When I do encounter one, I take as many notes as possible looking for new ideas. We have been planning ours for nearly two years. These boards are a great way to get around the ocean without having to launch from a boat ramp using a trailer. Most of the board builders have the skills to make one, but it does require lots of space and resources. I will do most of the shaping in my front yard under a tarp because the blank is so large.

I really appreciate your attention and advice on this subject especially starting a new thread.

I am giving myself two month on weekends to complete the project. I’ll keep the forum posted on my progress.

Aloha,

D

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Good Luck Dennis

Post photos of your progress

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I like your ideas about using the traction pad material and using glue to hold it down. I am using leash cups for the tie downs.

Bert Burger provide some absolutely insane pictures of their power boat racers that inspired all sorts of ideas.

Thanks guys for your contributions. I glued up the stringer and will cut out the plane shape on Wednesday.

Mahalo,

D

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Insane boating photos Bert

You are more of a “crazy man” than I first thought you were! Ha!

I bow down to you though on this one…I thought I was crazy racing Downhill Mountain Bikes (see photo), but you got me beat.

Regarding Reverse Rockers… In about 1969 we were making boards for Seaside Point that had reverse rockers. These boards had concave bottoms through the center turning into vee in the tail. But rather than cutting the bottom near the rails lower than the stringer, to create the vee, we kept the bottom near the rails normal and raised the stringer. This created a “reverse rocker” in the stringer line and a near straight rail rocker. The tail vee became a spine that rose above everything else on the bottom. The nose rocker had an extra flip in it at the tip.

So, between the concave and the reverse rocker…the boards were screamers! They were very narrow, and thin railed with domed decks. We called them “no rails” cause the decks just blended into the template with little or no crown at the rail. This allowed them to be quite manueverable considering what would be normally a very “stiff” bottom. There weren’t many waves that they couldn’t outrun!

Clark used to freak out when we ordered blanks with anti rocker in the tail. They said they had never seen it done!

Mickey Munoz visited Oregon during that time and shortly after Hobie was making a similar version of these boards…I think they were called the “Force Five” or something like that. I think they ran some ads about them in the surf mags. I don’t think they had the extreme bottoms that ours did though, just the general look. Mickey is a good friend and I talked to him about this later. He said they had a dealer in Portland and wanted to have product in the store there that reflected what was actually going on at the beach. We were flattered. Our boards were designed for a fairly critical and fast big peeling wave and weren’t really made for beach breaks, but they actually worked ok and considering what people ride today, they weren’t that radical really. But at the time they were pretty extreme.

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Bill,

Re: Seaside Point… were you familiar with the hydroplane boards Rolf Aurness rode there?

Thanks

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Aloha Dale

Yes I was familiar with them. But I sadly missed Rolf’s visits to Seaside Point. I was probably in Hawaii, I don’t remember now.

As a mat surfer, I am sure you recognize the similarity in the reverse rocker bottoms the boards I mentioned had to a mat when under a high speed trim. Kicking the tail down and generating lift is a powerful effect especiallly on longer point waves were there is time and space to put it to good use.

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Hey Uncle D…

with a block that big

how come you just don’t carve yourself out an outrigger canoe to fish out of?

you can mount a motor on the back or rig up a sail too…

I’m surprised no one here is looking at building their own EPS cored epoxied wood sandwich outrigger canoe like Gary Young’s doing on the big island…

Seem like you could even cut profile slice panels out of the flat stuff and glue them up like Rohan did with his blue XPS special to create a light weight outrigger for fishing…

it’s our next project for my bro and I that I’m not neccessarily looking forward to…

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Aloha Oneula:

That is close to one of the ideas we had for the left over foam. We were thinking of a 10 - 12 ft. fishing platform with an outrigger set up. Two make it completely portable, we want to use a system similar to Pope-bisect where the board becomes completely portable. Imagine taking your board via Hawaiian Air to the neighbor island to fish at a secret spot. I was also thinking about building a paddle board too. So many ideas, so little time and money!!!

D

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Bill:

You are correct. These things do take up a lot of space and it’s hard work. I started cleaning up the blank but decided to cut out the plan shape first because the blank glued up is huge. I should have the board shaped by labor day weekend. I am shaping my board in my yard and my garage. My friend is shaping his in his shaping room with no room to spare. Check out the size of the blanks. As pictured it is 14’ x 54" x 6". Also check out the nose rocker.


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oneula

id love to try making a eps proa

except i reckon they would still need some sort of ballast

cause the hull would be so light

if ya got some photos of any under sail in hawaii

id love to see them

hmm balsa eps pacific proa

sounds like fun and real fast as well

have you ever sailed one

cause you dont tack ,you shunt, which looks kinda weired…

id really love to see some lines if ya got any