Hi Swaylocks.
This will be #7 for me. As usual, it’s a modification of boards I’ve shaped in the past. This time we’re working with my small wave template, which has been through 2 iterations already. There’s been about 5 years between V1 and now so I’ve learned a lot about this sort of board between 2 of them and riding other shapes. I think/hope this will be a winner.
Alright not sure what happened there. Has image embedding been removed, and we have to upload to put them in?
Anyway, this setup has been through 2 iterations so far. Most recently it was a purple 5’4"x20.5" light hull to deep double to medium vee stubby thing. It was a good ride and will probably still be in service once it gets colder. I’ve been barreled on it. Really, if it wasn’t longboard only territory then you couldn’t go wrong with it. Of course, there were a few things I got curious about changing. those include:
-Quads. V2 only had 3 boxes. I never really rode a quad I liked up until like two weeks ago when I rode a lost/libtech puddle jumper. I got a good section on my backhand and bashed it so hard. I just felt right. The pivot that board had was so nice and it seems like it’s easier to get rad on smaller waves with that setup. If anything I can just run it as a 3 fin again.
-Rails. the rails need to be thinner. I weigh 120lbs at most. I can afford to thin them. V2 has quite a lot of float, which I don’t really need in the summer. V2 will be good for winter, but V3 is going to be put on a diet.
-The blank. the last one was from a 5’8" or something. I got a 5’3" this time. The board’s about an inch shorter than before and will probably pull some decimal number on a straight tape pull. It’s from greenlight, with a high density black foam stringer. This is without wood. V2 had a wood stringer and that was completely unneeded. The overall board will be a bit more curvy tip to tail, which I think will help with so much surface area, especially at the rails.
-Glassing. The other was 6+4 with vectornet on the top, 6 bottom. This’ll be double 4 s top and 6 bottom. Maybe it’ll end up a bit lighter. V2 is somewhat heavy, although it doesn’t feel it under your feet when you surf.
-Foil. V3 will have less foam in the nose. V2 isn’t too chunky and it has this nice anti-pearling effect from the high volume nose and the convex bottom at the front. I think it can get a bit thinner though, mainly at the rails. It’ll look nicer that way too.
-Tail. The tail on the V2 was massive and straight. It’s still pretty big, but I’ve broken up the outline with wings. I think this’ll help me release it on my forehand. One thing I have issues with is blowing the fins on my forehand. I have to go into a full layback, which is hard to recover in weak waves. I’d like it to be a bit easier to slide without leaning back so much. I’ve also nixed the diamond in favor of the fat squash, to recover a bit of rail line.
I’ll be keeping the same hull to double to vee bottom. I might a bit more mild on the vee, since the rocker has increased. That seems to work well on this sort of board. I actually made the template, then scrapped it once I saw it full size. The wings were too far back. Now they’re closer to the front fins and more in front of my back foot. They fronts will probably be 11" up, as they were in the past. Quads will probably be 5" up and the center rear will move up .25" to 3.25" from the tail. I’m thinking a more rail fin based quad, rather than having them closer to the stringer and further back. At that point why wouldn’t I just run a thruster, right? The overall outline of the board is similar at the front, but it gets skinny more quickly at the nose. I think it looks a bit nicer.
Do you mind if I ask where you’re at that you’re buying Greenlight blanks? I thought you were on the west coast.
With “new” templates, I used to trace them in chalk on a sidewalk or street - both sides - so I could see what it looked like in full size before doing anything on foam. I still do it for my friends/family who don’t work with the CAD programs and can’t envision how those renderings will look like in full size.
Ha no I live like 45min away from greenlight, so I go in person.
Oh, okay. My bad. Carry on.
Love your threads, i love where you’re coming from. I’m a light weight too.
looking forward to seeing your colour iteration this time.
What I like is the description of the thought process behind the design. Some guys work hard to copy an existing board, but intentionally tweaking the design elements is the next level after that, and for me its the most challenging part.
It’s awesome when people put more info into the threads. I try to do it but sometimes I’m doing it in such a rush between stuff I don’t put as much in as I used to. Trying to fit some time to laminate in this week;)
Just use an image hosting site and copy the html code
<img src=“https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/20479573_10208693176881052_6050823009972936027_n.jpg?oh=e3f2a614bc69c11e3c36e1e426fff899&oe=5A013B5C” /src>
Banged this one out for my brother in the meantime. It’s similar to mine just with this low radar cross section tail. I wasn’t crazy about it at first but it’s pretty cool in real life. This is 5’5" 20.5", longer than mine at the same width. These high density stringers hold a lot of dust. I’ll have to vacuum it out before glassing. And I feel like glassing that tail is going to suck.
I had a pretty informative session on my shortboard yesterday, which is 5’7"x19", 15" tail and super deep single. I can blow the fins so easily on my forehand with that board and the same EA tri set I run in the small wave board. I can also put it on rail easier. No surprise, of course. This makes me think a further but slight reduction of the tail width is needed on this next board and I’ve adjusted the template accordingly. The V2 was 9" across the points of the diamond, 1.5" up. This one’s coming up at about 7.8" across at one inch up. Between that and the wings and thinner rails I hope to be able to put this board on edge more easily. I’m gonna do this in full and see how it looks.
Anyway, back to my project… I made a few adjustments to the template, decided I better stop messing with it and just do the thing. So I printed it out, assembled it and all that, then put it on the blank. You can see how I paid attention to my rather small size 7-7.5 feet with this one. Hopefully I’ll gain some more control over the roll of the board this way.
This is the template over the V2 version. You can see how I’ve reduced the massive tail in the new version, but I’ve maintained the 17" width at 1 foot up. I gained a bit of rail line by going with the block rather than the diamond, which is probably a good thing on a 5’3", especially as a quad.
Okay, so there were two things I wasn’t satisfied with: the cleanliness of my workspace and the template. So I cleaned up, read the masonite template thread and made a nice template. I had a fun sessions on the predecessor to this board and learned a few things. I actually widened the tail up a bit so the gap between the winged area and further up isn’t so drastic. I rode the board I shaped for my brother, which is similar but with less foam in the rails. Less foam in the rails has a huge (positive in my opinion) impact on how these wide boards feel edge to edge. So the new template brings back the 17" tail and widens the tail block slightly, while still being skinnier than the predecessor.
I had to make it in two pieces since I couldn’t find masonite long enough. I sanded the blank a bit to remove the old lines and I’ll put the new template on soon.
I made little holes where I can mark the fins. they’re 11.25" up for the fronts, 5" up for the rears and the center for a 3 finner will probably be like 3.25" or so. I’m putting them pretty close to the rail, almost as close as the futures box will allow. Same amount of toe in on all of them, although that might change.
Did some more work tonight. With my template not a piece of shit, I got the outline on.
Some time later. I used a handheld jigsaw for the outline with a long, sort of wide and thick blade (so it doesn’t deflect or bend as much).
Put some marks down for the double concave. Like its predecessor, this will have a deep double from near the front that fades into a vee behind the front fins. I think it’s a good contour.
What the fins may look like. Fronts 11.25" up, rears 5" up. The fins aren’t actually that long, they’ll just fall on that line if you start at the back. It’s just a reference. I’ll most likely run EA fronts (a 3 fin set I like) and F4 rears.
A little wobbly but I fixed it. Not terrible for board number 7. I’m gonna make them a bit rounder up front on the bottom but keep it pretty foiled, then harder at the back. From the wing back will be 90* hard, which is more or less behind the front fins.
I mowed some foam tonight. Reduced the max thickness to 2.25" and kept a similar foil through the middle at its predecessor. I thinned the nose out more this time, and I think I might take even a bit more out of the tail. I’ll go look with a fresh pair of eyes tomorrow and compare the two.
It’s a similar rail to the last one, which is something I think I did right. It’s sort of hard on the bottom, but the apex isn’t so low that it’s super hard and angular. It’s still got some volume to it, but it’s a bit less chunky than the last one. The deck is pretty flat.
This is the middle.
This is the front. I moved the apex up a bit in the front. Autofocus struggled on this one.
This is tail. I’m going to do some more work on it tomorrow and get rid of that square part behind the hip. The tail might just get another pass with the planer too. Rail bands and blending with wings is new to me.
A combination of slightly crooked, lopsided stands and my own handiwork. I’ll fix it. It’s not as crooked as it looks.
Getting there.
I’ll do bottom contours and such tomorrow, or Saturday. Sunday there might be waves so I have to fix the current version. Some kook launched his longboard into me last time I rode it. He was riding around in the whitewash and just ditched it. Luckily the current version has quite a lot of glass on the rails. I got some cracks and barely took on any water. I didn’t see his but I kinda hope he made out worse than me. Interestingly, it seems the rail acted as an arch and distributed the force of the impact. The cracks are above and below the impact point by about an inch. I think I made out well for a direct hit from a longboard being pushed by whitewash.
Here’s how it sat as of Friday night.
You can see where this is going. Deep double to vee. My iight setup isn’t quite even and I think the left side light is too high, which is why you can’t see the vee, or my vee is bad. But I think it’s actually the light being higher. I dropped the stringer height relative to the rails, so it’s sort of like a combo of a single and double. It’s always hard to capture bottom contours.
Here it is next to the old one. I saw this and realized my rails weren’t thin enough. It’s hard to tell, but the apex on the new one is a bit lower. Anyway, they were too thick, so I very carefully went at it with the surform rather than the planer.
I still need front fin boxes. They’re on their way.
So now the rails are thinner and the deck’s still about the same thickness as the old version. The tail and nose are also thinner. The vee is less intense since the tail rocker is overall greater. I kinda lengthened the double so it should have more effect under my front foot. i tend to ride heavy on my front foot.
Here’s the old version, which as I said got torpedoed by some kooks longboard. the impace was in the middle, I think, but you can the cracks, the obvious one and the other just where the bottom of the board meets the rail. I gently heated it with a heat gun before and I apparently took on no water. There was no bubbling or anything. No I’m fairly sure his took more damage than mine.
Okay, so it’s glassing day. I did one of these types of patches over the box. Bit of a weight increase but I want this thing to last, plus I’ll save weight on the top by going 4s+4s. I included the made in USA lam but it got covered up more than I hoped.
As usual, pictures don’t do it justice. It’s one of the cooler color jobs I’ve done for sure. I wanted the tail to look less smoked and more black and white, but, it doesn’t and I’ll live. Would have had to have made more resin for that.
From the other end. You can see why the USA lam got covered up.
Did some hot coating tonight. I took the advice I’ve seen on here and did a squeege coat before I did the actual coat. So I just mixed up some resin and pushed it around with a squeege stiffened by use for glassing. Seems to have eliminated much of the issues I’ve had in the past, although I’ll have to go check on it to make sure there isn’t a million pinholes or fisheyes now.
*finger purposely over the lens to block the light.
The other logos became more or less invisible under the laps and deep purple color. So I used my last sheet of rice paper to print up these retro style ones with a gradient fill and another made in the USA lam. I’ll just be careful when sanding to not remove them, and a little bit of ink removal will add a nice distressed look to them anyway if I do mess them up. I was going to put it half wrapped on the rail at the nose, but the rice paper shows way too much on the purple. It doesn’t show all that much on the gray.
I guess it’s done. took longer than I wanted, but, doesn’t everything? Got some grainy, slightly blurry shots of it in all sparkly in the rain.
I got white resin on the rail, as you can see. Not happy about that but whatever.
Should all go well, I’m riding it thursday night in chest high waves. Hope the high tide doesn’t kill it too much. If not, there better be waves over the long weekend.
By the way, thanks swaylocks. There’s so much info on here. This is board 7 for me, if you couldn’t tell. Would be on board 0 without this site.
love it, so good to see build threads, yours are epic lots of details.
Thumbs up! Working with color is fun. I haven’t made a white board in a long time. Looking forward to the ride report.
