The glasser who has my fish is trying to encourage me NOT to use glass on fins, but will do them if I insist. Given that bit of info, does Future or Red X make a keel fin for fish?
If not, how will other types of fins work on a real fish?
Most likely I will press on with the glassons, of course.
Just curious. If someone makes removable keels I’d go with that for my convenience and the glasser’s.
Me thinks the glasser just doesn’t rant to hassle with the glass on fins. Glass on fins are cheaper than fin systems and they take more time to install. Glass on fins on a nice classic fish look bitchin.
You could always have someone construct fcs keel fins that fit into the plugs. Not much harder than constructing plywood fins.
I just thought of something. You have a point about FCS. That could be done, but a keel fin couldn’t be constructed for Futures because the Futures fins have to be put in at an angle in order to lock them in. I don’t know anything about red x except that I’ve seen the color red several times, and the letter X many times.
I remember seeing lokbox producing some nice looking keels on swaylocks a couple of months ago, their should be some info in the resources. I made my self some keels for my FCS plugs. They only lasted a month until the fins (carbon) ripped out both sets of plugs.
I found the future twin fins on a wide tail fish slipped around a bit and did not have the drive of the large keel fins. My fish with future twins, good in knee to chest high surf, not too steep. My fishes with wooden keels, knee to a couple of feet overhead, fast and hollow.I think it would be a mistake to put them on your fish. Plus, the wooden keels look bitchen. Mike
Side note: Sorry I missed you on your earlier trip up the coast. If you come back up north let me know and we’ll surf. mike
Even if you use FCS with 3 plugs they will most likely rip out, the system isnt very good at handling heavy loads especially by the tip. Thats pretty much why they discontinued the old longboard setup. Remember 6 plugs in a row? The force applied to the tip caused the plugs to roll out. I assume a big keel would cause the same problem.
Well, they glassed them in (the wood keel fins I brought to them), but the fins aren’t set like the original fish fins. They are almost parallel to the stringer, but turned in one eighth, and the glasser didn’t glass them 90 degrees, but slightly more. Will that make a huge difference, and if so, will it be negative or positive?
troy- email him, and i’m sure you can get setup! i believe its a vaccum jig, that comes with an extra thing to do longboard centerboxes or something. i think the whole setup runs like 150 or something?
This is my fish. I rode it for the first time yesterday. While I would still like to have a Skip Fry fish someday I no longer desire one. This board is magic too; most fun I’ve had in a while.
The Lokbox picture above (orange/smoke) is my brother’s 6’6" fish, also from Roger Beal. This board is 5’10"
Do you have any dimensions on the other available templates? The CI template doesn’t seem to have nearly the same amount of base as the classic fish fins. I didn’t see any fish templates on your website.
Nick, check back in a week or so and you will see some keels on the site. It’s being uppdated now. The CI template has less base to help the average surfer go rail to rail easier. Most of the other templates mentioned have more base and less height than the CI.
This is a more traditional type template-
I think the base on this one is around 8inches x 5 inch height.