After almost a year of lurking, I’m finally going to shape my first surfboard.
I plan to make a 6’6" egg with a 2+1 fin setup and I need some advise on the template and the fins.
I mainly surf blown out, mushy beachbreak (2ft - 6ft)
I’m 5’11" and about 160lbs.
My skill level: I can only follow a line and do some basic turns, no cutbacks yet.
I currently ride a 6’6" 21" 2 5/8" fish popout.
I have attached the .brd file and also a .pdf of the template I made and I would like some comments. Is this suitable for me? Should I change something?
Regarding bottoms, I plan to go with some belly in the nose, flat in the midle, some vee at the finbox going to flat out of the tail.
Also, any recommendations on fins? What size/ template should I give a try?
well - the basic concept is good… but if you can’t do cutbacks yet, I suspect a 6’6" egg might be a little frustrating for you. I would suggest just a bit more size, around 7’ to 7’4" for your egg, until your skills improve.
Personally I’ve had eggs work well with thruster setups, but I don’t think your fin selection is going to be as critical as having the right size board.
I think 6’6" will work fine! I’m 6’3" and my first shortboard (shortboard, not even an egg) was 6’6" (I was already >6’). And It worked fine. At that time I could only make some frontside turns.
I forgot to mention, I’m going to travel with this board pretty often. And it is usually cheaper to take a board under 6’6" on the plane. That’s why I was thinking 6’6". But if that is really too short, maybe I should reconsider and go a little longer.
Thanks for the offer soulstice. I have just sent you a PM.
I forgot to mention, I’m going to travel with this board pretty often. And it is usually cheaper to take a board under 6’6" on the plane. That’s why I was thinking 6’6"."
One of the best reasons for size or " what fits in my truck".
stay with 6’6" then…youo only weigh 160 lbs and this board is wide and pretty flat and will plane up and paddle quickly. If you want to have an easier time learning cutbacks I agree with putting vee in the tail, however I would opt for more vee where your back feet are (around the side fins) and less vee out the tail. This will help you initiate onto the rail for both turns and cutbacks and give you good speed down the line. Make the rail in the front forgiving.
By your moniker (Glidesquad) sounds like that is your attraction to eggs. I rode them a lot esp. during summer around Santa Barbara, but also rode them a fair share at Rincon Indicator.
These boards had the ‘tongue depressor’ planshape that you are prescribing to, and I rode them in the 7 to 8 foot range. The ones with vee handled bigger waves better, but I never really desired riding these boards in surf more than a couple feet overhead.
When I did get in some meaty waves with them, it was very apparent that the way I rode these boards were wholly different from my more downrailed gunnier boards. By this I mean you do a ‘weight on’ turn versus projecting turns. Mind you, the eggs I was riding didn’t have real hard edges other than at the tail. But to keep these boards from spinning out (these were single fins) I sunk them into the water by pushing very hard on the board thru the bottom turn. They would come rebounding out of the turn with a lot of speed and traction if I did this. If I projected where I wanted to go with light pressure on the board and my upper body weight extended and throwing out toward where I wanted to go, the result wasn’t nearly as good.
The above became particularly apparent with the eggs we built that were flat bottomed (or roly poly) versus flat & vee combos. Everything you do with your board will have a direct relationship to what the water is going to do when it meets your design ideas. The flatter you make you 6’6"'s rocker the longer it will feel until you get to a point where there isn’t enough curve and it is stiff or sticks where you don’t want it to. Then you are resigned to compromising your surfing for a design limitation.
Have fun with it, but keep in mind moderation leaves you room to move.
Thanks for sharing you experience with eggs Deadshaper. My surfing skill is just not up there to rip a potata chip in mush, so thats why I was looking for something that glides well in shitty waves and I think an egg might be the right choice for that.
Anyway, I’m aware that there’s more to a surfboard than outline and rocker. But as I’m going to have the outline/rocker hotwired from EPS, I’m going to focus on that part of the design first.
For somebody as unexperienced as me its impossible to see if a certain rocker/template combo will work well or not. I guess everything will work to a certain degree, but as you mentioned, there comes a point where you hit the design limitations. Without experience it’s all guess work…
It’s good to know that Vee is very important in these designs. Could you give me some pointers of how much Vee would be appropriate? (starting point, depth, …)
If you are keeping the board at 6’6" and you weigh 160, your fin placement for tri fins would be similar to a regular shortboard. Meaning side fins would be about 11.5" up from the tail to the back of the fins. The rear fin can comfortably be 3.25" to 3.75". The rule is if the cluster of fins is grouped closer together the board will be easier to turn. If the fin spread widens, the turns are ‘drawn out’ longer.
On a tri setup you can place the back of the rear fin up 3.5" and using a 4.5" based fin this will give you a fin spread of 3.5" to the back of the front fins. This would be a very standard and acceptable fin spread for most conditions.
If you are doing a “2+1” setup.meaning a larger rear fin using a fin box and you desire smaller (aka sidebiter) fins that commonly have a smaller base of around 3.25"-3.5" and similar depth, than you can push those sidebiters further up to experiment. The board would be fine with those fins up at 12.5". You can toe (angle in) the front of those fins so they point at the nose or are off from the nose a couple inches if you draw an imaginary line from the inside flat of them to the front of the board. Typical toe in for many boards is 1/8" to 1/4" more at the leading edge than the rear if you measure both of them from the board’s center.
More toe in make the board maneuver easier but can slow the board down esp. if the toe in intersects before the nose. I have one teamrider using a very high performance ultralight longboard that swears by this setup but he is unusual as he turns from very far forward and all his other design criteria is setup only for him.
Canting the fins out (cant- meaning the tilt of the fins) more than the standard 3-4degrees helps facilitate easier cutbacks…something you are interested in achieving. On inset single and double concaves I have been running cants at 8 degrees. This seems pretty extreme, but the feedback has been good. Your board doesn’t demand that if you incorporate vee into it.
As far as the vee, I would place it slightly forward of your back feet. If you put tri fins at 11.5" and the base of those are at least 4.5" this puts your leading (front) edge of your fins at 16". I would suggest you try 1/4" to 3/8" vee in that area of 16" to 18.5" up then have it decrease to 1/8" at the tail. This will ‘advance the vee’ and give you more speed and good rail to rail transitioning action. Esp. for those ‘weight on’ turns I was previously talking about. As far as measuring the vee, I’m just giving you a layman’s way of measuring it, meaning you are measuring one half of the board…put a straight edge on it and push down on one side and measure at the rail. Obviously 1/8" at one rail would mean 1/4" overall. vee.
The regular side fins should have the back edge of them measuring 1.25" to 1.5" in from the rail edge. And I would suggest a definite hard edge where the side fins are all the way back to the tailblock. Do not make the rail soft there with this much vee…otherwise you will lose a lot of speed and planing esp. in sluggish surf.
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