Boards that get in poorly

General Discussion
1

[edit, 9/28/2014:  I have this same question on some different, more recent boards, with some specific questions about smaller/shorter boards and concave bottoms – rather than make a new thread, I’ll take them onto the end of this one]

So I have an obvious question:  what makes boards get into waves poorly (for a surfer at a fairly average weight:volume ratio)?

The other day I surfed a board a buddy made that was probably in the neighborhood of 44-46 liters (I’m 205-210 lbs on any given day), and most of its features made it seem like it should have been a wave catching machine, but I had to paddle it with everything I had to get it into waves.  I tried shifting foward as far as possible; it didn’t help.  Once the board was up and going it was a rocket, but it was just interesting how hard I had to paddle it once the wave was under me to get into the wave.  Most of my boards are in the same volume range, 42-48 liters, and none of them have to be paddled that hard to get in.

I wonder what people more expert than me would diagnose as the cause.  The details:

  • rough dims:  6’ 3" x 24.25 x 2.75

  • plan shape:  Fish/Simmons hybrid – a fishy outline with a wide, square tail, but with some curve in the tail outline, and more like a fish in tail width and contour, just squashed instead of swallow tailed.

  • bottom:  mostly flat with very slight belly in nose, flat through middle, to vee out the tail.  Basically a flat-bottomed board with just a little tail vee.

  • rails:  boxy, thick, fairly consistent, i.e. not very tapered up or down along the rail length.

  • rocker:  probably something like 5.25" in the nose, 2.65 in the tail, with no flat spot in the middle.  I didn’t measure the rocker, or anything other than the width.

  • fins:  twin keel

 

I thought the wave-catching characteristics must be the rocker/bottom combo, specifically in the nose since it was only an issue for me when the board’s nose was in the water (not when the nose was mostly out of the water while the board was on rail), but maybe the width/planshape are also factors?

I guess I could add the anecdotal noob input that when I’ve copied rockers from boards that felt good getting in, on boards with concave bottoms (usually to double barrel to vee), the result has always been a board that gets in fairly effortlessly, even when changing the planshape significantly.

2

propably because as you stated,no concave.

I remember reading on here that concave helps the wave push up under the board and propell you… i think?

I had similar issues with a new board i just finished and tested today, exactly the same as another i made but this had flat bottom with v rather than concave and it felt like the wave wouldnt really push it and it also felt like it was getting hung up when i took off.

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As  I read it I was thinkin rocker when I see your numbers I am pretty sure , Also foam distribution effects wave catching BIG time.

4

Could it be because there was too much volume?  Too much rocker?

5

Nose too wide and / or too thick.

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My guess would be rocker profile, with too much rocker under the middle.  I’ve had boards like that in the past, where if your weight was a little back while paddling it would plow water, and if too far forward the nose would bury.  I call it rocking horsing.

7

It is a combo of elements.  Rocker -------- The more relaxed the better wave magnet ( to a point).  Volumne-----  It is the distribution of volumne rather than how much.  Concave-------- Where it is placed in relationship to your body when paddling and standing is critical.  Aside from these three critical elements;  I personally am a proponent of “belly” on some but not all types of boards.  Also;  get the fins crossed up or toed wrong and your board will be a “Dog”.  L

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flatter tail rocker

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I would think that those “golfball” type  dimples would get you over the edge quicker.  L

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Yeah…many thanks for the feedback.  I think all of the comments apply, and were part of the post-surf thinking/talking about how the board went.

The one interesting exception is the overall float question.  It definitely wasn’t too much float for me, per se – I have boards that work well for me with equal or greater pure float – but the board was made for a person about 50 lbs lighter than me, to paddle and somewhat surf like a longboard, with mini-mal-esque volume for that rider.   I would guess the rocker and flatness of the bottom will function totally differently for the intended rider – specifically not push water or plow, or be stuck between the two – given that for the intended rider the board’ll be almost planing on paddle, and possibly not have the same issue as far as getting in that it has for someone my weight.  For the intended rider, it’s a short, fishy hybrid with longboard float; for me it’s a fish/Simmons hybrid with normal volume for that type of board.

I thought it was a very cool experience in terms of it having that difficult entry for someone who IS my weight; an opportunity to try and understand what was causing it to enter poorly for a rider of my weight/size/weight-distribution.

Thanks for the insights – they all seem to apply in terms of me riding the board.    I actually love the way the board rode once I was in and up, and am planning to make a copy of it with a deep-ish single-to-double concave and “spiral vee,” with perhaps a bit less rocker (maybe 3.65" in the nose, 1.75" or less in the tail), knifey rails, but with the same planshape and overall volume.

 

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The older I get, the more getting in early / easy becomes an important design criteria, LOL.  This is a good topic for me, glad you brought it up.  

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 From the discritio That board is pushig water.  Like others have said rocker. 

 

13

rocker was my first thought…

I would love to hear you elaborate on foam distribution ACE. specifically how to tailor it for different boards

14

Seems like alot of rocker for a wide simmons/fish type of board? I would think the roll creates a bit of drag, combined with alot of rocker. Does it have a release edge on the rail in the tail? What’s the foil like? I’d say rocker and foil have been the culprit for paddling on some of my boards. 

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Cheers, Huck - me, too.

 

One thing I’m wondering (have been wondering for a while):  what’s the role of concave here, i.e. “creating lift” if in the nose (making getting in harder in the abstract?) versus allowing water to flow past the nose roll into the middle and through the middle of the board?

A chestnut from my own experience:  on my second board, a Simmons-hybrid – pulled in tail, lightly bellied nose to a mild single concave to double-barrel concave to mild vee, and pulled in arc-swallow tail – when I first finished the board it was horrible getting in.  You’d feel the wave start to take you, and then when you’d push the nose down to get in you’d feel the wave pushing the nose upward right at the moment it should have been allowing you to get in.  Luckily, this was my second build ever, and thanks to some glassing catastrophes this board had a s*** ton of glass on the hull.  Just guessing as to how to fix the hull – the concave looked too far back to me – I sanded the concave to begin closer to the nose, in my mind to allow water to flow past the nose belly and nose rocker more freely, and the board gets in fine, now.

What happened there?

I would have thought if lift is that crucial in a noserider, that the effect of lift (kicking the nose upward as the board excellerates down the wave?) might have potentially outweighed any water-flow gain, causing the board to get in even worse, rather than better?

Topical topic for me, as a friend wants me to make him a fish based on a traditional fish he likes, and it’ll be the first hull I’ve ever made.  I’m nervous as hell that it’ll end up being a board that sucks getting in.  How do fishes get in so well, being hulls in front?  Is it most crucially just a matter of  the stringer line being flat enough (I’m planning 3.5-4.125 in the nose, 1.5-2.0 in the tail, somewhere in there for a 6’ fish)?

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At the surface speed experienced at take off, I think any lift from a concave would be minimal, if at all. On a board with a pronounced nose rocker, concave in the nose would even the rocker out some. Maybe even minimizes the amount of water being “pushed”.

nose concave at trim speed is a different animal, especially if the rider is standing directly over it.

I think fish get in with low rocker and wide tail - if it had a pulled in tail and pronounced nose rocker probably be a bit harder to paddle in.

On the other hand, love watching pros at indo on little potato chip boards with crazy rocker doing two stroke takeoffs every wave haha!

just an opinion, subject to revision, lol, your mileage may vary.

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if your rocker is too flat and you have to get further back on the board to stop it nose diving you’re going to be pushing water as well. 

18

 

 

  You didn’t mention your height , your age , or your fitness levels . The waves where you surf …fat , slow moving ?  or pitching  tubes ?

 

  board design , yes , maybe ,  but our ability must surely …er … 'weigh ’  into the equation , too …

 

how do you go paddling other boards ?

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I’ve noticed, in my experiments with stubby type boards, that width is an issue.  Wide, short boards (22-22+), take off like crazy and fly once you’re up and planing, but create excessive drag when paddling.  Probably due to the rider’s weight distribution over a short, wide surface. It does make you more conscious of positioning on the peak when you try to catch a wave.

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Fins, I surf OK, & nearly every day. On the right equipment (42-48L, any of the boards I’ve made), I generally make the waves I turn and paddle for when anybody else is around (surfing alone I’m lazier).  Surfed as a kid, didn’t surf for 20 years, have been back in the water 4 years and am still getting better as days pass at 46 (as opposed to getting worse).  Being short/squat/heavy my surfing’s improved a lot since the first board I made because after 14 boards I pretty much have my equipment dialed (just need to fill in the step-up and LB slots, and all the slots will be filled with boards that work like they’re supposed to for me); tough to accomplish that in a year when not making your boards yourself.  This is me surfing the first board I made at Middle Peak at the Lane a year ago.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybLG22cVK6A .

Re conditions, the day I surfed my bud’s board was a poor quality day, knee to thigh high at the Hook, but I’m so familiar with that spot I can get a good idea what’s going on with a board in almost any rideable conditions there.  As far as the difficulty for mespecifically of getting into waves on that board, I didn’t have to be paying attention to notice there was an issue on it for me; it was very obvious.  It felt like right after the point that the wave was starting to accept me and pull me into it, where normally you go to push the nose down and pop up, the wave would literally push me out of and off of it unless I paddled very, very hard, accelerating my paddle until the very last possible moment.

"Wide, short boards (22-22+), take off like crazy and fly once you’re up and planing, but create excessive drag when paddling.'

^Ron’s observation makes sense (and mako’s earlier comment doubles it), but I wonder if others care to weigh in about this stubby/drag observation (or whether it might be overcome by additional volume, e.g. when one adds 10-20% volume for a stubby grovelboard as compared to daily driver). 

I’ve sometimes felt that on HBSB hybrids having too wide a nose outline could sometimes feel like they had a lot of surface area tension/resistance in the front of the board when trying to accelerate, with the board flat, down the face of the wave, e.g. redirecting down a flatter faced wave after a vertical snap when there’s not much speed left at the end of it.  This seemed also to be an issue on a egg/stubby I made (photos of it below), where until I got the fin set-up to be as fast in flats as I could make it I felt like I was always way over my front foot when trying to surf the board in the waves I wanted it to cover (small, weak, grovelbutt waves).

It really seems like all the explanations have been on point, but that the rocker/lack-of-concave-to-counteract-it/foil combination for my weight and weight distribution seems to be the primary nexus for the “rocking horse” effect that phebus identified (experienced by me as the feeling of the wave pushing me back out of it just at the moment of the board tipping downward to enter the wave).

Huck:  thanks.  On that subject of tails, I’ve been surfing a Couch-Potato/Sweet-Potato inspired board in the terrible surf we’ve had in SC for the past week+ and have had that come up in trying to explain to myself why it doesn’t get in better than it does at its huge volume (probably around 49L, somewhere between 48-52, but close to 48 or 49, 6-3 x 22.75 x 3.25, very thick 60-40 down rails, planshape from the CP but with nose width increased slightly).  It has better wave catching range than any board under 7-2 that I have, but I feel like it could have even better range – get in easier if not paddle better – with a slightly wider, squashed (more mini-simmons, less egg-oriented) tail.  I’m going to make a bigger 7-0 version for my 240lb brother in law with a squashed or diamond tail, more like the Couch Potato’s.

Couple of pics of that 6-3 “potato”-mash-up, my “Batato”:

And this is the board in the YouTube link above of the Lane, after deck hotcoat – it’s a 6-3Simmons-Fish hybrid (mainly fish planshape, probably about 42L) but with a pulled-in, double-winged battail: