A friend of mine had a body board made that looked like a smaller version of my simmons style boards. I offered to make himn a new one so I could experiment with the small size.
He wanted a 4’10"x 23"x 3" board with a single fin.
The attached photos are how it worked out.
I cut this out of 68rp blank I normally use for my simmons type boards. It was a funny looking rectangle to start with.
The blank was supe thick at both ends after cutting the shape out. I rolled the forward bottom rails up a bit to get the rails thinned out up front.
I was not sure where to go with the bottom. As a belly board, I imagine flat would have been fine. I added a little double concave V though the back think it might help swing the width.
At 6’ and 220 pounds, I imagine it may be inpossible for me to stand up on this. After I ride it, I will probably have all kinds of ideas for the next one.
Paul is about my size, it should float him well as a body board.
If anyone out there has shaped something like this - I welcome comments and suggestions.
Please let us know how it goes
I took the wife to the beach the other day when the kids were at school. Crap tiny waves so I took the kids body boards. Man they’re fun when it’s total junk, and I reckon a glassed, stiff one would be awesome. Fast and fun in total junk.
I’d do the Devils foam eps though. You’re going to lay on it so it’s not big deal I reckon. And thin, I’d want it thin, it really only has to have minimal float. Bit of nose flip. I’d just go standard bb outline but maybe blown up a little, and I wouldn’t go too wide in the middle, maybe 20" but keep nose and tail slightly wider.
i’ve made a few vaguely like this. mine are similarly chunky, although basic stubbed tails. it’s only a pool toy, so i keep it simple. ;^) you really don’t have huge freedom in dimensions at this size anyway, and at such a short length, it turns plenty without a lot of curve in the rail.
i rode the longest of them, about 5’3" ish some yesterday (standing, not prone). i am similarly about 6 ft 225 lb. they can be very fun, although it’s hard to have one that both kicks and paddles well, as your fore-aft position is so different until they get way short.
my take: since these are usually small/mushy wave monsters, i avoid any vee. if you ride prone, your drag will do a lot of what i feel like vee provides. if you stand up, you’ll need all the lift you can get if you’re a big boy. i do think concaves help hold some of the water underneath, as it’s so easy to have a lot of flow across the axis of the board with such a short and directionally unstable platform-- convert drift into drive as much as possible. over time, i’ve rolled the nose less underneath with less tuck as well, again with area and lift in mind. the belly looks better though as the fat nose looks odd when it doesn’t roll or tuck on bottom. the roll is also easier to hold with hands if you’re prone and kicking, it just steals your energy when it’s marginal. i can’t believe a single will hold the tail in standing, although riding prone your legs serve as fin too. a sizable single will also drag in the trough on a lot of the waves where these are realistic.
these things can be super drifty standing no matter how much fin you use (good luck backside), and there’s not enough rail length to have fins forward. oddly enough, and i’m inviting typical sways abuse by saying this, but i’ve had good results with a tri fin setup right on the tail block. i don’t mean thruster, i mean three smaller fins right on the tail so it has a corner fin to drive off of and somthing in center to straighten it back up and help drive. if you stand, your foot will be right on the tail block, so there’s not really anywhere else to place the fins.
i both agree and respectfully disagree with beerfan. i cut these from light EPS/XPS, as they are inherently strong at this small size and the corkiness helps at this lower edge of push from the surf. also, as you can see in lefty’s post, you have to butcher any regular blank and don’t really get the rocker you want. i disagree with the suggestion to thin the nose. the flex in a booger allows you to do a lot of things that you can’t do on a stiff board. you can dynamically pull back and rocker up on a late drop and push down and flatten out for speed/projection as you move down the transition. once you make a rigid platform, that’s over with. if you rocker it enough to make it comfortable on steeper drops, it’s not paddleable or drivable at all. with the flatter rocker you need to drive laterally, you depend on buoyancy to save the nose in many cases rather than the curve. if you paddle rather then kick (necessary if you’re going to stand), the “bow” is in the drink a lot of the time, and your nose is literally past the nose. when you do a cuttie (again, obviously standing), it’s pretty common to carve about two thirds of the way through the turn off the tail/corner and then drive the nose under as you shift onto your front foot and it starts to drift/release in the last third. that buoyancy is going to save you up front every time when it the nose pops back up and you try to go move back to center and then the opposite rail to continue down the line. even prone, your position is going to be more forward than you think if you can’t push the nose down and flatten out.
i’d say the squirrelly factor is part of the fun, at least if you’re using this as a small wave choice for a bigger fellow. real paipos for serious waves get very different, but as a way-more-fun alternative to a longboard in small, shallow beachbreaks, that’s my (more than) two cents.
-cbg
Great info thanks for sharing mate.
Body boards are cheap for the kids, and last a few years. But for an adult, really, they don’t last that long. I’d rather build a basic one that I know will at least support me and last a few years ( at the moment I’m post op after having hardware removed from my knee so no surfing for a month or so 
). It’s certainly not my first choice of surf equipment, but might be a cool project. This week or next I’m heading past an insulation eps sheet distributor, so I might pop in and grab a sheet.
what grade eps are you using ( in metric )?.
I read this the other day and found it really interesting:
http://mypaipoboards.org/interviews/PaulLindbergh/PaulL_2010-0225.shtml
Follow his ideas and you’d be bending a sheet of corecell for nose and rails, glassing it, and that’s it.
i’ve used 1 lb/ft^3 (16 kg/m^3) as well as 1.5 lb/ft^3 (24 kg/m^3) construction EPS thicknessed and sandwiched between blue dow XPS (1/2" sheet, unknown density) such that the EPS is only under the laps and gets at least twice as much glass. at 1 lb density, this approach pretty much demands a composite skin, . at 1.5 lb/ft^3, you can get away without bagging skins, but i’ve still sandwiched all the EPS with XPS, adhered with PU glue. i used to have a number of pics on sways of these sort of blanks, but it seems all the old pics that weren’t hosted externally went tits up over the years, even if the posts are still around. i’d be hard put to find those old pics again.
i think you could go without the XPS and do a bit more glass, but the hand lammed shell seems less stiff and compression resisitant, so the core is pretty vulnerable. i’ve done thin yoga mat or cork top on the decks to spread the compression loading even with the bagged skins. an interesting low-tech approach might be to rough cut planform and thickness your EPS sheet to get the foil you want then weight it into your desired rocker form with light deck and bottom lams in place under plastic film. once it goes off, the rocker is set, you can cut an inside outline and glue on perimeter rail strips of whatever you care to use, shape the rails, then lam the outer shell or just tape the rails, depending on how heavy your first lam was. the low density EPS by itself is just so floppy that it’s hard to carve in the rocker reliably.
i know it sounds complicated, but it’s really not on boards this small and can net you some very inexpensive cores. just like any board though, if you have a weak core, you need to get your strength in the skin. make a few test panels and try it out with scraps to get the feel of how it’s working for you before you commit a big batch of epoxy. finger squeeze is a good test for these, as that’s usually how they fail, compressive point loading. it’s hard to snap a board this short, so it’s mostly finger, knee, and elbow crush that ages them, barring catastrophic puncture/impact. oh, i always opaque these with a light color pigment in the resin, as it’s hot and sunny where i live. your mileage may vary.
-cbg
That’s a nice looking board. I build Paipo boards out of 2 lb EPS foam purchased at White Cap Construction. It is pretty tough stuff. I use 3 layers of 4 oz cloth on the top and bottom with no stringer. This makes a very light but strong board. My current and favorite board is 52" x 21" x 1 7/8 with a 3/16" pad on the the deck. I am 6’ 210lbs. Your board will be hard to duckdive. Check out mypaipoboards.com for different styles of boards. There is a guy who rides boards like yours on the site.
Thanks for all the detailed feedback cbg. I will put some of your designs to use on the next one. Thanks for directing me to the paipo site jbw, cool stuff.
couple years ago i was having hip/back issues, so had to go the prone route for a while. paul gross desinged a 7’ body board. 7’ so i could paddle and not have to kick. one of the funnest boards ever! i still use it on certain days- proning is a blast for sure!
I’ve been doing belly boards in PU and EPS for a few years. In fact, I may have built “Paul’s” last board. Like you, I started with PU fish blanks, but soon found EPS to be a better solution. Here is a link to some of my work http://tp4surf.blogspot.com/search/label/Belly%20Board. I have discussed the design in detail on the MyPaipoBoards.org forum, and there have been some belly board/body board threads on this forum.
Here are two recent boards of mine. The first by Chris Garrett is about 54" x 21 3/8 x 1 7/8". The other by Huie is 50" x 19.5" x 1 1/8"
The latter is entirely finless, the other can be ridden with or without fins. These are clearly made to be kicked rather than paddled. An earlier version of the board by Chris could be arm paddled but was thicker and was much easier to paddle, with fins installed.
There are endless possibilities - depends on the waves to be ridden and what the surfer wants to expereince.
Bob
Howdy nomas - great looking boards. The wider tail with single concave crossed my mind. Thanks for posting photos Bob.
