I was looking at that new board on the Sways homepage and thinking you were gonna be challenged by the short radius curve of the rail and I wondered how it would perform–you would need big fast fins for most of your drive, it seems
Although on second look, you have a FLAT rocker, so you get trim from that, and turning release from your rail curve
What’s the question exactly? You need more trim drive? If that’s it I think slightly bigger rears or the 3 across would do it.
Do you know how much toe-in you have? My guess is the amount of toe-in combined with the larger area fins (front ones pictured on the board) is the factor(s) affecting your trim speed the most.
Since you don’t want to change the board, my suggestion would be to use a fin in the center plugs, symmetrical foil and of an area similar to larger front fins. Switch the larger fronts with smaller area fins, sort of like a 2+1 setup, and try the smaller fins in both sets of side plugs to see which gives you the most trim speed.
Or, if you can, use fins with less cant on the sides. When you trim forward, cant+toe can act sort of like trawler net planes (otter boards) to slow you down.
A good little swell yesterday, 3ft clean point break, got me some new insight. I put in a quad setup with FCS TF1 carbon fins front(the old stiff ones) and sym. 3.5" rears.
Trim speed improved, but only on real steep faces, but when I started pumping the board like a thruster it started moving. I think the short rockered rails are working against the glide. But they are great in full on twinfin turns. I even got a nice hangfive on this one on an inside face building up again. It is a special board that will take a lot of adaption to learn to ride, but I can learn a lot of new technique from this one. It will be a good test platform for fin development. Its specialty are smaller waves with clean steep faces.
there isnt enough info (your weight waves etc) to make a good proper advisement, but what Ive realized is that a center fin will do a couple of things; stabilize the fin setups response rail to rail an add more thruster style drive as compared to a quad. If you have the capability, make three similar sized fins for the back, about 3.25" and mostly stiff. Preferrably made of solid fiberglass. The sides single foiled, the center double foiled.
If the ride feels too solid and stiff without enough release, bump down the size of the center fin by 10-20%. Thats one of the beauty’s of fg fins…you can tweak them down in size, but you need proper rotating disc sanding tools.
Dont know if this will go better for you and your board, but it works really well for me. HTH.
Would you mind showing us sometime how you mold your fins? That sounds pretty interesting…
JSS
Maxmercy , I dunno about soulnpowers molding technique but Im molding 3" fins on the ‘Sidebites for sidefins.’ thread. Theres little grinding involved and its a clean process.
My technique is from making dental and medical implants so its accurate but really simple and adjustable. All you need is a bit of know-how.
You could easily make copies of your favourite FCS or Futures fins and copy or personalise them,not that I’ddo anything like that.
