I’m shaping myself a gun and I’ve played around with different rockers and foils a bit. But I’ve never shaped a gun with a beak nose.
I like the beak nose boards that I’ve tried for a few reasons, One is that they generally foiled with full rails and a lot of volume in the front 1/3rd of the board, and that had made the board a good paddler and good for getting into waves as well.
So it isn’t just for asthetic purposes that I’d like to try a beak - They have a functional purpose also.
The thing I’m wondering is how much nose rocker can a board take before the added volume of a beak nose starts working against you?
This is for an 8’ gun(ish) board. I’m not a heavy guy - about 165 lb with my suit on.
The blank I’m using has about 6-3/4" nose rocker, but I could reduce that by altering the bottom curve a bit.
One gun that I shaped in the past had about that much nose rocker and I left the nose fairly thick - That was a mistake because it was terrible to duck dive.
So I want to just get some opinions on this before I make my final decision.
Hello; you do not need any beak nose to have thickness in the nose. I do not like beak noses but shape those thicker noses in some 8ft big boards (You can obtain that thickness without a beak nose)
If you like finesse you would shape a more pleasant nose.
You can not duck dive an 8ft board man.
Also is not good to have a wider area in the nose in such a large board.
Light surfer+longer board+wider nose+too much nose rocker=more paddling and force to take off the wave. And if you are not good in large surf, pearling etc will occur.
Have to concur with this: "Hello; you do not need any beak nose to have thickness in the nose. "
OTOH the beak is sort of a way for the shaper to signal to the buyer s/he’s thinking about & intending to “hide” and beef up volume.
Matt Biolos does a board with an almost tuna-spine-fin looking beak that really does absolutely nothing other than look either neato or not so neato, depending on the point of view of the viewer. It adds about 3 tablespoons, at most, of volume, before disappearing back into a lower foil flow that doesn’t need the beak to have the same flow.
Beefing up volume via width and thickness tweaks (while keeping length minimal) has been up til recently the main reason I make boards at all. It’s a primary goal for me on almost all boards made for myself because most off-the-shelf boards paddle like poo for me, at least compared to the versions I make for myself. I’ve done beaks, more for cosmetic or why-the-hell-not reasons than anything functional, and I always end up taking them out before considering the board done, without changing volume at all significantly. IMO the shape and execution of the rail (both plan shape and hydrodynamically, assuming the foil is on point) near the nose has more functional influence than 1-3 tablespoons of volume via a peaked beak.
This just came up while I was scrolling through my phone (pic attached). Sharing it both because it made me rethink my last post, slightly, and because it’s the nose of a likely late 1970s Croteau that a friend of a friend had, from a big wave gun (single fin), made under the Equipe logo.
Where in the surfing world is your gun(ish) board intended to be surfed? And what is the size range of the targeted waves? It is helpful to know, before making a comment.
Shown is the wave where I’ll be riding the board I’m shaping.
During the winter it gets bigger than what you’re seeing in the pic x2, but not very critical.
There are typically a lot of longboarders in the water when it’s good, so I want a big board just to hold my own (I’m 65 yo)
The board with the yellow deck and red rails is my 8’2" gun it’s 19 1/4" wide and 2 7/8" thick.
The blank is the board I’m shaping - it’s 20 1/2" wide - It’s asymmetrical. It will be a single fin
The yellow/red gun is pretty good. I like the way it paddles and take offs feel very predictable. To get that board to pearl on take off I would have to be trying.
I just want a wider version of that board - So I used the gun template on the toe side rail and on the heel rail I used a curvier template with the wide point on center.
That blank has 6 3/4" nose rocker - My red/yellow gun has that NR and the thicknbess is 1 5/8" a foot back from the nose.
I could duplicate the foil of my 8’2" gun on my new shape, but I’m just wondering if it would benefit by giving it more thickness up front and maybe reducing the nose rocker a bit, because I’ve found out that excessive nose rocker can work against me when I’m paddling out.
Sort of a beak nose concept
Mainly to make the board more manageable when paddling out or if I get caught inside
Now that is one of the best examples of “form” rather than “function”. Just looking at that Biolas board tells you the “beak” has no function and doesn’t need to be there. But I gotta say it looks very cool. That’s part of The Industry. Form or looks sometimes are stronger selling points. I understand why it is done. If you can shape a nice thick nosed longboard without a beak in the nose, you should be able to do likewise on a gun. There was a period of transition from long to short. During that period a lot of Shapers had yet learned to bring a stringer down in the nose. Primarily because early Shortboards were still front foot oriented, therefore wider and fuller in the front half of the board. Downrails also made it harder to thin the center and stringer. Some of the noses on early transition board were as thick at the tip as the board was in the chest. Just saying that the Beak was a design element that was slow to be let go of. And not something in today’s world that is of necessity. Reverb is correct.
I had an AAh - Hah! Lightbulb moment … I realized that it was’t the nose rocker that I was having issues with, it was the foil
The issue was that a few years ago, I shaped a board with a funboard blank that I ordered with some + nose rocker. The finished product was a fun/gun with about 6-1/2" nose rocker and it was a terrible experience paddling out through shorebreak on that board, because it would come up and hit you in the face any time you would push the nose below the surface to get under approaching whitewater… (I won’t use the term duck-dive) I ended up cutting the nose of that board back and re-shaped the nose into a beak that had about 5" of NR and it was just fine.
But this gun that I have pictured a few posts ago… The one that’s glassed… It paddles out just fine.
I realized that it’s more about the foil than the rocker, because the series of gun blanks that are being offered now have consistent thickness from the middle to about 8" ahead of center.
This makes an enormous difference, because when someone is paddling his body is further forward.
Anyhow - I’ll shape it with 6-1/2" NR and just use the natural foil of the blank and I’m fairly certain that there won’t be any of the issues that I was originally concerned with.
