Has anyone ridden one? 8’ 0’’ x ?‘’, and 5’ 8’’ x ?‘’, two sizes offered. The reason I ask is because I may buy one of them, as the answer to surfing La Jolla Shores, which is over run with lame and clueless groms, newbies, and surf school ‘‘students.’’. Not where I want to take a ‘‘real surfboard’’, that I’ve invested my time, money, and skill in. Only to have it damaged, by one of the above described individuals. The fins look like $h!T, but I can make a decent wood and glass fin to mount as a single. Your experiences? Opinions?
HA HA… my daughter goes to UCSD and surfs La Jolla Shores (and Blacks) a few days/week. She rides a 5’6" that I built her. Look for the logo (below) and tell her to get the heck out of the water and spend more time in the library (studying, not texting or facebooking or whatever she does with my money)
Cheap enough to play with…
You will fit right in…
If you can’t beat em, join em.
Jamie o’brien rides one at pipeline
yeah right Bill…get the 5’8" one…let’r rip, tater chip!!
I admit it. I have the 8 footer for my kids when they have to surf in the designated summer surfing beach. My daughter rides it very well but I find it too flexible and the foam is abrasive.
just like w/ any foamer. ride it, get bored of it, cut it down into something else and have more fun. just wax the crap out of it. that deck surface is so slippery in the water.
Oh Bill Please NO! Just ride a beater!
Bill on a Costco foamie?
Bill T, who shaped my Hansen Master in 1967?
strange dayz, here come the alien crop circles and locust plague…
you have to wax those?
Actually that’s a brilliant idea - I wonder if they’d let you enter a modded Costco board in the current SBC build contest? Officially there’s “no rules”, and the “F.O.R.D” SBC thread’s been going for a while now; you could always claim you’re simply “pre-emptively recycling” a mass-produced board that’s about as “pop-out” as it gets and which would stand a good chance of turning up abandoned in a rubbish tip a few years down the track after being purchased by a member of the general public (i.e. someone who’s not a long-term committed surfer).
Hey gordof - how did that board you posted the pic of perform before and after the modifications? What kind of surf conditions was the modded board intended to be ridden in, and how did it stack up to a foam & fibreglass board designed for similiar conditions?
Just how far is it possible to “hot-rod” a Costco foamie? To turn it into something that really performs? I’d be interested to see what someone with thrailkill’s knowledge and experience could come up with on such a task.
Liberate the high-performance surfboard lurking within that foamie and set it free! 
Seriously.
huck, the wavestorms are slicker than snot w/o wax. i don’t think a lot of beginners know that.
L.I.T., it rides like you’d think. it’s fun, but it’s not railing turns or anything. it can “turn” and go down the line, but it’s a floatie thick foam board w/ fins you can bend. i’ve cut down 3 total now. the one pictured was 4’10 and fun. an old doyle…it looked like a bullet. way fatter at the back than the front, but could be surfed.
i turned a wavestorm into 7’ rabbit’s foot (just cut a curl in the tail) for finless. it sorta worked, but not really. it was more fun surfed as the normal wavestorm w/o fins. the sharp rail lines made finless pretty fun on tiny clean days. i then chopped the rabbit’s foot curl off and it was a 5’8" “simmons”. just cut the tail straight off. that was the most fun, twin fin. i eventually cut the tail to look like a fish. i think it worked more fun as a simmons…like the points in the tail flexed too much. i didn’t even seal the cuts on the last two tries. doesn’t really need it if you don’t care about some water leaking out when you park it. finally, i have that board no skinned and roughly shaped into a 5’4 simmons type thing. figure i’ll glass it someday. there are 3 crappy plywood stringers buried in there, so cutting/shaping is effected by those monsters.
i’ve purchased all of my foamers off craigslist used for $50 or less. well worth the fun to me at full size and an easy way to mess w/ crude shapes or fin configs (drill holes and put 'em where you want). why not for slow summer days?
edit: (for the record, i know a properly shaped simmons is way more complicated than a squared-off tail on a foamer)
duplicate post - see my post below for what was originally here.
I had exactly the same idea; straight after I made my last post I was looking at the shape of the Wavestorm in the pic Ace posted earlier in the thread and first thing through my mind was “lop off the tail and turn it into a Mini-Simmons type board”. Mind you, I’d probably first check to see what kind of a rocker the board would end up with after you’d gone the hack on it - so it’s encouraging to hear it improved the board’s performance after you did exactly that.
The other idea went through my head was doing some trimming to turn it into a Firewire Nano or possibly a Vanguard/Vader/Evo type board. I’ve read people describing the Vanguard as “a longboard with the nose and tail cut off it” from when it was first introduced; well the Wavestorm is an 8’ longboard, why not put that theory to the test? Lop off the nose and tail, seal up and cover the exposed foam, relocate the fins to suit and hey presto, you’ve got a super-floaty “Vanguard” for super-tiny conditions (something the regular Vanguards are not noted for excelling in). Okay, so you wouldn’t have the funky bottom contours on the Vanguard (although I’ve ideas as to how to achieve that), and who knows how close the rails are to the ones on a real Vanguard (can’t see rail-shapes too clearly in the pics of the Wavestorm). But it’s a start.
And if it shows a bit of promise after riding it a bit, I’d likely try and put some quality fins on it like thrailkill is considering.
What ideas do other people have?
Saw a picture of those plywood stringers (in a snapped Wavestorm) that you mentioned - looks like they’re moulded into the middle of the board (i.e. there’s a bit of EPS both above and below the stringer so the stringer is not in contact with either the deck or the bottom materials). You wonder if that EPS above and below the stringer would fatigue/break down after a bit of use from the greater forces generated if you were able to squeeze some real performance out of the board?
A Costco foamie is a far better choice than an SUP for dealing with crowds. It’s all relative.
This thread has provided a few laughs thus far. A refreshing change around these parts, lately.
L.I.T. i wouldn’t get your expectations too high out of these boards. i don’t think turning the wavestorm into a simmons “improved performance”, it’s just a fun way to tweak a shitty board and ride it for a few months before it fully falls apart. it rides “best” as it was made. the simmons was just the most fun version of all my hacks.
you can lop off the tail, play w/ fin placement and have some fun, but that’s about it. i wouldn’t cut off the nose or expect to mess w/ rail line/shape. it’s just too complicated w/ the materails. the rocker on a wavestorm is basically perfectly flat from the tail up through 6 feet or so, then it has a kick in the nose. i’ve never measured it. the bottom is completely flat, too. no concaves, contours or v’s. the fins are not stiff due to the design. performance isn’t very possible w/ the elements of these boards. in all the boards i’ve messed with, you can see the the EPS and stringers separating due to exposure, too, but i don’t seal them. the plywood just soaks up the water.
a real blank isn’t more expensive than a costco board. if your goal is something legit, i’d just make a legit board.
Well, as you may imagine, I’m in the grip of an approach/avoidance conflict. Because of my age, weight, physical condition, and laziness, I’d probably go with the 8 footer. From the quick visual exam of the board that I did, it looks to me that a simple re-finning could make the most profound improvment in its performance. That said, I’d most likely go with a thick foiled single fin, as I think that has the best chance to milk out, whatever ‘‘performance’’ capability may be within. I’m just not sure I can deal with the stigma of being seen with one of those things! If you hear about a masked surfer riding one, it may well be me, incognito. I’m going back to Costco, with a tape measure, for a closer look.
Bill: We have the technology. You can make it better, faster, stronger. Why not give core cork and epoxy a try?