Thought I’d venture out and share some of my own work. I don’t expect to make very fast progress on this project, I’m out of town for a week or two then have to get some old furniture out of the garage before I can start shaping. Could be a month or more before I produce any dust. But I’ll try to post updates here at every stage.
Within the last year, I found out that I have a congenital bone disorder in my left shoulder - meaning I was born with weird bone structure in that arm. I also have a partially torn labrum, and it’s not worth surgically repairing because the way my shoulder is shaped it would likely tear again soon anyway. There’s likely a shoulder replacement in my future, although hopefully that’s 10 or 20 years off. It’s not recommended that people with my condition participate in activities like swimming or surfing, but my doctor told me I can still do those things at my discretion.
I’ve never been a high performance surfer in the first place, but now my focus is definitely on doing what I can to keep surfing for a long time. I’m not that old, turning 30 this month. Hopefully there are still a lot of waves in my future.
One of my first shapes was a big bloated glider. At first it was great being able to catch waves so easily, but the novelty wore off quickly. Now though I feel like the idea is worth revisiting. Besides, I’ve moved to a new part of the country, and most of my local breaks are really wide flat beaches. I think it would be fun to catch waves outside, then try to make it past all of the flat sections and reforms, and cruise all the way to the sand. Take my time walking back up the beach, paddle out through the channel, and repeat, hopefully giving others plenty of chances to catch waves while I’m completing my circuit.
I’ve been playing with an outline for a while. It’s really wide in order to avoid the popsicle stick look, 25 1/4". I’m quite tall and can carry the 27" wide Millenium 113P blank under my arm, so I don’t anticipate that being a problem.
Other details:
Bottom contours: I really like rolled entry (only first 1’-2’), fading to subtle triplane. Slight double concave through the center, around the location I anticipate standing. Concaves and triplane disappear at leading edge of the fins, flat off the tail.
Rails: I have a rail profile I really like to use. Tempted to adjust this and make the rails just a bit thinner than usual because of the tremendous width of this board.
Rocker: 4 1/2" nose, 4" tail? These numbers come from an old John Mellor post.
Fins: 2+1 boxes for versatility.
Feedback welcomed, both positive and negative.
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