whats up guys, my names sean and thanks largely to studying these forums for the past few months, I finished shaping my first board about 2 weeks ago. it’s pretty much a fat, flat simmons (5’9 / 23" / 2 3/4"). it may even be thicker than that but i figured more is better than less here since im 6’4 and hovering around 205lbs. what a fucking blast this thing is! (“inboards” is a little brand idea i had, and the tail was just kind of a stylish way to lose some tail volume without compromising the stringer, not being entirely sure of the boards strength). so this was done with UV kick silmar, but I’m interested in moving forward to mixed poly and epoxy boards - do you guys have any advice on that? also, any wisdom on rail shaping / painting designs would be.much appreciated!
Cant be much fun standing on that deck at the tail?? Not seen that before.
How do you find those fins, what cant is on them? As a fellow larger guy in just finishing up a similar board and deciding on fins.
the fins are futures rasta keels, i couldnt give you an exact number on the cant but its pretty slight, I would almost have to be looking at it against a straight edge to notice. as for the deck - with my limited hydrodynamic understanding, i wanted to lose volume at the tail hoping to be able to sink it a little to get a turn out of it if need be, but never having done this before didnt want it to be so thin without stringer reinforcement, so what i ended up with is something that is probably more form than function. that being said, im not sure if this is common of simmons’ but a step forward or back makes it a different board. also these fins are raked back pretty far and actually extend past the tail a very little bit.
My advice is to stick to UV poly and skip the color thing for now. That will make your process faster and easier so you can do more boards in less time. Surf this board for a couple weeks and see what you like and see what this particular combination of design elements does and doesn’t do for you. Then plot your next step with this design and take it.
The biggest lesson with building your own is that they’re all fun when they’re surfed within the limitations of their respective features.
Hopefully he’s not putting his foot behind his leash plug to stand on that thing. if he’s doing that hes got a whole other list of issues to deal with.
Looks like good arch support… wink
Small area behind the leash carved out, I doubt it would have much impact on your footing areas, more likely it’s just the jarring visual impact of doing something a little different 
Looks like great fun, what kind of waves are you using it in? What blank did you use?
When I first looked at the side-view fin photo my first impression was that you had invented a new inline quad set up! “Hmmmm - maybe he’e on to something there…”
the concave only comes up a few inches into the deck, there’s still plenty of space for proper back foot pressure, im mostly using it in waist high or so beach break, maybe a little bigger but I don’t think it’ll be much good on head+ because the bottoms pretty flat. it came out of a usblanks 68RP. its a blast, mystifyingly it.turns pretty well even with those fat rails. it came out about a 5’9, and honestly I’m confident i could go shorter
would a quad inline work? i had actually been tossing around the idea and can’t really figure out how it would perform, maybe with a set of twins and one of those “guitar picks” they’ve been throwing in the fifth center fin box on quads?
There’s some dispute about this, but many people consider concaves in terms of increasing surface area across the bottom and adding lift, and to be more important in designs with narrow tails than with wide tails that already have a lot of surface area.
In fact, some people (like me) subscribe to the idea that a wide tail doesn’t need more lift because it’s already strong in that aspect. What they do need is more control so a convex like a panel vee or a rolled vee will compliment that existing strength, whereas on a narrow tail that is already easy to control a vee might slow it down.
They’re all compromises - adding in one area of performance will tend to take away from another area.
The other thing I was going to mention is now that you have your own Simm, you might go back to look at what other Simms builders are doing with their design and ponder a bit what they’re trying to do with the features they’re using on the design.
The actual shaper of the first Mini-Simmons is Joe Bauguess. He now does several variations. One of them even has a double concave that looks like your’s except he’s using a twin setup that’s probably 6+" forward of the tail block. A variation of Eaton’s Zinger design.
[Quote]One of them even has a double concave that looks like your’s except he’s using a twin setup that’s probably 6+" forward of the tail block.
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Did you miss that the double concave you speak of is on the deck not the bottom? Pay attention in class!
I’ll take a look, a quad Simmons is probably what’s coming next. also, what is the drawback to UV kick resin? this stuff worked great, i no don’t understand why it isn’t the standard, except for the epoxy because the zerovoc stuff is crazy expensive
yeah if nothing else i figured the concaves are at worst just non-functional, but eye-catching and good practice for putting one in the bottom next time without ruining this boards rideability