Just finished glassing a 9’1 longboard. I’m going to put in a 2+1, FCS on the sides and finbox in center. Don’t know anything about finboxes, I’m seeing 8 inch and 10 inch boxes. I’d like some flexibility, and plan on eventually using just a single fin. I’ve heard disagreement on where to place it, so I was thinking go big (10 inch) and set it far back, 5-6 inches off the tail? Thanks
In my opinion you are right on the money with that set up. It is all personal preference, but to give you the most flexibility I would go with 5" up and a 10" box. That way when you go for the 2+1 set up, your fin configuration is more realistic. In other words, you will have room to drop that trailing fin back. With the single fin setup, as long as you don’t go with a fin that has a huge base, you will have enough room to push it forward to give you decent single fin placement. A fin box tip. After you route out your hole for the fin box, wipe the box with a little acetone (to ensure a good bond with the lam resin). Mix a little hot batch of lam resin (so that it kicks in about 5 to 10 minutes, just enough to cover the very bottom of the routed hole). Drop your box in there and align it. I like to put an actual fin in the box to get a good visual alignment. Get it straight and let it kick. Now you have your box aligned and you don’t have to worry about it floating around. If you don’t set it with some resin, when you pour in your lam resin/pigment mix it can cause the box to float from the bottom of the hole, throwing off your alignment. (This has happened to me before and it’s no fun). You don’t have to use any wax additive, it will sand down fine without it. When mixing the batch to fill up the box, don’t use too much catalyst. You don’t want it to over heat. If so the side of the fin box will swell a little bit and as it cools it will contract, leaving you with a small slit between the fin box and the hardened resin. If you get this, you can come back and fill it in without much problem, but you will get a better bond if you let the resin kick slower. Good luck.
Howzit Mike D., I like to add some milled fibers to the mix for extra strength and bondage. Aloha, Kokua
I’ve found O’fish’l long boxes go good. Easy to install and easy to glass, I’ve only put them in longboards but they work.