Hello all
Im a 1st time shaper and i would really like to try shaping a copy of the Al merrick CL fish
although im familier with shaping itself, i cant really figure out how to copy the design (rails, rocker etc.)
Anyone can help with the dimensions? (some links would be nice)
Thanks to any help
hiya Parko !
welcome to sways ! [how’s mick and ‘deano’ going ? …you guys rip !]
Anyway …
I got THIS from a “google image” search …doesn’t say heaps , but at least it is an outline , and foil and rocker shot …
if you can get hold of the C.I. brochure , that may help ?
…or , if you are in america [?] , maybe you can see one in a shop , yes ?
okay , I hope this helps ,
cheers
ben
Thanks for the reply
I already have that picture (its on the Channel islands site) and it does give a nice overall look at the rocker and general shape, what im interested in are exact dimensions (height, weight, thickness of say a 5"8 or 5"9 CL fish), and details like the shape of the rails, the tail dimensions and such.
Unfortunetly i’m not in the us, and i have no access to this board (the local shops don’t really sell authentic merrick boards) so i came here looking for help.
being in west oz , I have never seen one either ,
so I will stick my neck out here and hazard a guess …
depending how tall and how much you weigh ,
maybe anything from
14-16" n x 5’10-6’2 x 20 -?22" ? x 2 1/2 -3" ? x 13-16" [with a ?6" buttcrack?] , and maybe 8-12" wide pod [tail tip to tip measurement]
[they DID say customs available on request , eh ?!]
the beauty of making one yourself is , you can make it whatever dimensions will work best for YOU , your waves , your style …
What board[s] do you ride most of the time , Parko …thrusters , fish , twinnies, singles ?
cheers mate ,
ben
Answers: i’m about 5"8, at 140 pounds
I ride a thruster and my main need for a fish is to experience something different, and just to carve the wave really (making use of the wave to its fullest)
I really like the shape of the merrick fish, and think it would be fun to shape and eventually to ride.
Hi Parko,
Congratulations on deciding to make your OWN board. Chip has good advice. Unless your a prodigal genius, having all the CI data will not result in your board being a CI fish. But, you can make a fish for yourself that you’ll be stoked to ride. It will be a Parko Fish and fly. Lot’s of people willing to share templates and numbers here including me. I suggest spending a couple hours in the photo archives and discussion archives, too. Lots of stuff on fish. Mike
The CI Fish is a great board to have in your quiver. I rode one, but it was too short for me… It was a 5’8 or 5’6 and I kept stepping in the crack. An excellent choice…but you don’t need to make a replica of one to have a good, traditional, fast-as-hell, feel-the-vibe, fish.
Fish are pretty stripped-down shapes that don’t require a lot of complicated concaves, bumps, rockers… or fins, for that matter. Their beauty is in their understated simplicity. That’s not to say you can’t make a bad fish… there’s quite a few out there. So you gotta do it right.
Some of the other fish I’m digging out there right now are the Beatty, the Tudor, the Bessell, a bunch by KG, and the ol’ G&S.
Fish are fun to shape and fun to ride. Very forgiving in both areas, too.
You can use APS3000 to import a picture of the board then draw the lines to match its outline. It’s not always completely accurate, but it does a pretty good job.
For a 5’6" fish, 19 15/18" at its widest point which is 3" up from the center. A foot off the tail it’s 15 3/4" wide and the distance between the two points is 11". A foot off the nose it’s 14 3/4". You can always play around with these measurements and adjust the outline or the overall length.
snip…dont want that on my permanent record
I own a 5’9" CI fish. It’s about 3 months old.
it’s 5’9" x 21" and is 2 5/8" thick.
It’s actually quite a complex shape, it has a very deep single concave through most of the bottom going into a noticable vee between the fins. It does not have as greater beak-nose as your expect and seems to have most of it’s full volume in the middle section as the thickness goes right to the rails - they’re very boxy.
Volume per weight wise. I’m 5’9" and 160 pounds, mine fits me perfect.
Thanks for the replies all 
After watching some photos of different fish on this site, i decided that obviously i cant copy the exact design, so i will make the board in the spirit of the the CL fish but add my own little details (its kind of hard to explain what i want to do, but its all in my head)
I’m still doing research about shaping (i want to absorb as much information as possible before actually shaping it) and wont start shaping it for at least another 2 weeks (just to get everything sorted) so i have plenty of time to worry about design, material, and tools.
Thats a pretty nice explanation Brent
Any chance for profile, rear, and front pics?
Hey Parko,
Its always good to have a huge research before shaping the first one. i know some of these sites have helped me and maybe they can help you:
http://www.surfersteve.com/introduction.htm
http://www.surfline.com/mag/features/how_to_shape/index.html
and ofcoarse the swaylocks archives which befriend thousands of posts of goodness.
Also checknig out a shaping dvd if you can be bothere like shaping 101 or anything like that might help.
If you already know a crap load about shaping and just want to know dims and crap then this has been a useless post 
Have fun and build a great fish.
Chris
Thanks for the reply cheater
I’ve ordered “Shaping 101” and already read the articles you gave (and some others) but your post is far from useless, Its always nice to hear positive comments from people
Answers: i’m about 5"8, at 140 pounds
I ride a thruster and my main need for a fish is to experience something different, and just to carve the wave really (making use of the wave to its fullest)
I really like the shape of the merrick fish, and think it would be fun to shape and eventually to ride.
hiya again Parko !
just a coupla thoughts on that …
if you mainly ride thrusters ,
unless your name is joel parkinson , dan malloy , tom curren , or daniel thompson , you will likely find the lines a fish draws / you draw on a fish will be / feel different to those of your thruster . Not better oir worse , just different . The fins , the width , the thicknes , the curves [or lack of them , particularly in the tail area of the fish ], will mean a different type of surfing .
just something to keep in mind , as you consider WHAT you want the board to do.
I’m out now , but if you like , I can pm you more later , or if it will help others , post it here on the forum .
bear in mind I am no fish expert , though, I will only be sharing MY findings and experience of these designs …others may disagree or vary , that’s cool …it’s a [relatively ] free world !
later ,
ben
p.s. - what sort of waves will you be riding it in ?
Parko -
I typed out a reply to your original post earlier and deleted it because I didn’t think that it was squarely on point in relation to the questions you asked. Now that the thread had evolved a bit, I will type it out again. Hopefully this is helpful.
I have a bit of experience with the CI fish template. Cutting to the chase, I own a 5’6" Dyno fish that I is much too small for me to ride (at 6’1", 215lbs). I wanted to copy the Dyno fish in something along the lines of a beefy 5’11". The problem was that when I scaled the 5’6" up to 5’11" I ended up with ridiculous width and thickness proportions (as well as tail).
I played around with “fudging” the template I pulled from the Dyno but never really ended up with something that worked.
Now, fast forward to late 2004 or so after the fish concept had once again gained traction and much better shapers than me were releasing modernized twins.
I “borrowed” a template (outline) from a 6’2" CI fish (thanks to a local surf shop that wasn’t particularly busy on a weekday). My plan was to see how the curve of the CI outline - at 6’2" - mated up to the curve of the 5’6" Dyno fish. If memory serves, the 6’2" was 21" wide about 3" forward of center and about 2.75" thick. I think that the crack was around 6-7" deep with something around 10" tips.
Once I started laying the 6’2" CI template over the 5’6" Dyno template, it was pretty obvious to me that I wasn’t the only person “borrowing” templates.
In particular, the 6’2" mated perfectly with the curve of the 5’6". And it produced a board that was 5’11"!
So, I was able to come up with “my own” 5’11" template by morphing the CI 6’2" outline with the Dyno 5’11" outline. The middle 30-40% of the board is all CI curve. The nose and tail are all Dyno. It probably sounds weird but the curve connected perfectly - no hips, no shoulders, no nothing. One smooth, continuous curve.
The point of all of this is that you seem to have an idea in mind - as did I - of what you want your fish to be. I wanted something more along the lines of the Dyno board, which had a fuller nose and a foil that was more evenly thick with much less flip than the CI fish. The board I ended up with was just that and I love the way it surfs.
My advice is to pull a few templates if you can get them and connect the curves until the thing you see matches the board you have pictured in your mind. The CI template was a good “chasis” to morph to my final idea but I think that I would have been disappointed had I simply copied the CI board because it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. It sounds like the CI is close to, but not exactly, what you want.
Hope that helps.
hi again Parko !
I sent you a private message .
if you check the "my messages " box ( on the left hand side of the page when you are on the forum topic list page ) , you should have a green word to click onto there .
If you think the info is helpful / useful / relevant , I can post it here on the forum …
cheers mate !
ben
I can post it here on the forum ...ben
I’m interested.
cheers ben !
[sorry about the lines through this , crew …I don’t know WHY that happens , even after 22 MONTHS of it ?!]
these are just my thoughts and findings , by the way …others may vary …
" “Answers: i’m about 5"8, at 140 pounds”
at that size , I think a 5’10 x 20 x 2 1/2 would be plenty of board for you . Depending on the waves you will be riding , of course…
14 nose , 14" tail ,
tail width tip to tip …dependent on if you want curve [a twin FIN setup] or a relatively straight tail [a twin KEEL setup]
nose rocker and tail rocker a bit more than a “standard twin keel” if you are used to going vertical [yes?] on your thruster.
Flatter rocker if you want to trim more , and draw longer more drawn-out turns on a twin keel , and also helpful for flatter waves .
This was the reason I was asking what sort of waves you will mainly be riding it in ?[strike]
a 20" width will go rail to rail quicker than say a 22" wide one , and feel less like a kneeboard.
your thruster , would it be around 6’1 x 18 1/4 x 2 1/8 or 2 1/4 ? close ?
so , obviously , a 20" width on a “fish” will ALREADY be 1 1/4 " wider than the average modern thruster , and at 2 1/2" minimum thickness , it will be at least 3/8" to 1/4" thicker than a thruster.
A lot of fish rails seem very thick / eggy / blocky , too , compared to a thruster’s rails . These will tend to sit higher in the water , and be harder to bury in a turn , so you might want to think about having fairly fine [thinnish] rails , it’s easier for us lightweights to turn the board that way ! [for the record , I am 5’91/2" and 154lbs. And I am 45 years old . I ride both a 5’8 and a 5’11 fish …the 5’11 is 20" wide and 2 1/2" thick .]
Anyway , I hope this helps !
ben [/strike]
Very useful information chipfish, thanks
The waves i’m riding are rather flat but can get pretty big in the summer (although their not very strong their pretty fast)
and in the winter it gets really big, powerful and sometimes really hollow (it can also be small during the winter, but no to small)
The fish im thinking about wont be suiteble for winter, because i’m planning on a flat deck, very little rocker and rather thick (A board that will suit the summer conditions)
As for wave riding, i always consider myself as a technical surfer (vertical tricks, tubes) but i want to be able to cruize on my fish, gaining speed and maybe a trick when the wave allows it.