Alright, after months of reading, watching videos I’ve finally gotten started on my first build! So stoked to finally get started!
So due to a lack of funds and sourcing problems due to my location my first board will be a reshape of an old performance longboard that was given to me.
Original Board Dimensions:
9’x22 1/4”x2 7/8”
Rocker: 5”N 3”T (rough measure, since I don’t have a rocker stick yet)
Nose Channels go back 1/3 of the board
Slight V starting at the channels that get more pronounced to about the fins.
Original Design Plan:
(inspired by Emerick Ishikawa)
Double Ender/ Two Tailed Egg
6’5 x 15”N x 20” x 14.5”T x 2 5/8”
Twingle Fin Setup w/ WP 3” forward
Keel Fin w/ WP 3” back
Symmetrical Rocker: 3”N 3”T
The goal is a board that will suit the waves in my area. Think longboard type waves; slow peeling, slopey, not steep, quite mellow usually. But also getting typhoon waves during the summer which bring size but still quite forgiving.
I’m an intermediate surfer, longboard background so comfortable maneuvering bigger boards around and hang fives. Some experience with shorter boards but most often the waves are better suited for longboard. Quite comfortable on midlengths and every so often will jump on a 5’10 keel fish. Don’t have problems catching waves on shorter boards but still working on my shortboard technique. (Lot of habits I carry from long boarding that don’t translate to shortboard so well, ie tall, narrow stance)
I’m 5’11 and 130lbs.
Also thank you, sharkcountry for all your help so far! Talking through design ideas and answering my dumb questions.
First Step: stripping the fiberglass off the board.
I used a saw to cut off the fin boxes, an orbital sander to sand down the rails to the foam, peeled off the strips of fiberglass from deck and bottom, and at the end a butter knife, lol, to get the glass that was stubborn.
Everything went smoothly until I got to the nose channels and the ding repairs… the glass stuck inside the channels so that ended up tearing out chunks of foam. Then the ding repairs had some material that was so hard and stuck to the foam that I couldn’t do anything with it. Luckily they were on areas I’m not going to use.
So I ended up designing my template on Boardcad and printing it out.
But I didn’t realize until later that the outline was resized when I printed it. I’m not sure if it was the printer settings or maybe something to do with the file margins being at 1” all around.
I printed it at the local 7-11 which lets you plug in your usb and print but everything is Chinese so maybe I missed a setting…
The template dimensions ended up being 6’0 x 18.5”
I decided to cut and tape it together anyways to see how it would fit on the foam and luck would have it that the outline fit better than my original design. It allowed me to bypass a majority of the chunked out foam areas. I just had to widen it a little bit to get to 19.5” at the wide point.
Then I proceeded to rough cut the outline, leaving a good margin to true up later since this is my first board and I figured I’d be glad I had the additional foam.
Thankfully I did that because I realized my skills with the saw actually kind of suck. Left with a lot of bumps and dips that I will need to smooth out with some sanding to get an ok looking outline.
Made my first board from a Clark Foam blank when I was 16 or 17. The next 4 were made from longboard cut-downs. Made all of the templates from a graph paper drawing, transferring the image to heavy duty poster board. Learned the graph paper method in high school woodshop.
Go for it!
I tried using a make shift batten from these plastic bendy things I found. But they weren’t quite long enough so I got a little paranoid that the curves weren’t good enough. Then switched to Boardcad for ease of mind.
So took a rough measurement of the rocker today with both sides coming in at about 1” in nose and tail.
The thickness at the tips are both at 2”.
So I’m coming to realize I won’t be able to adjust the rocker to 3” and still have enough thickness in the tail and nose.
If I went extremely thin I could maybe push the rocker to 2.5” but I think for a more normal thickness at the ends I should probably keep it at 2” of rocker.
Does anybody have an experience with very low rocker numbers? And what was the ride experience like?
I know it’s my first board so probably wasn’t going to turn out that great anyways but I’m wondering if such low rocker is going to make for a bad ride.
I imagine it’ll be fast but will need to watch out for pearling.
I have quite a few low rocker boards. They suit rounder waves obviously, not so good with hollow beach breaks! Super fast for trimming down the line but not so easy to turn … well not for me anyway. Having said that they are mid-lengths so something shorter like you’re shaping should turn a bit better? You just may not carry as much speed through a turn with a low rocker. It was always going to be a factor from a cut down board. Keep going and see what you get from it!
Definitely going to finish! I am also curious to see how it turns out and I need to start somewhere.
Round waves you say? That’s perfect, the waves down here are more longboard waves so rounder and quite forgiving. It’s why I figured a low rocker board would be ok on these waves. But just wasn’t sure now that the rocker is going to be even lower than planned.
I’m kind of hoping the curvey egg outline would help loosen the board up for turns.
This is my 7’4” fat guy Davo fish. It has what I call a “turbo hull” (taped off middle section), this is truly a Magic Carpet ride. Just wanted to share. Best, The Walrus…
It’s a very slight channel. It creates acceleration. Was very surprised to learn that you can take off super late on this thing. You can ride 2’ slop, or 8’ grinding Hurricane swell. Very maneuverable, frontside or backside. This board has zero hang ups. Plus, you’re riding the wave when the Potato Chip riders are flailing like crazy to catch the wave. Experience level would include everyone. I’ve had this board for 25 years. It’s epoxy.
So just been waiting recently for some tools and material to come in to continue with the reshape.
Waiting for the 2x4 to come in which I’m going to cut down to get two sanding blocks, a 24” block for sanding the rocker to help me sand down the rocker symmetrically and a 12” block to have a smaller sanding block.
Also got a post leveling tool that has a 90 degree angle which I’m going to use for truing up the outline. Hoping the 90 degree angle will make it dummy proof for me in getting the rails sanded smoothly and at 90 degrees.
Recently just been practicing with a trimming plane on the stringer of some off cuts. The plan is to use the Greenlight “stair step method” to set the rocker and keep a continuous curve. (Trimming down the stringer starting from 3” to tip, then second pass at 6” to tip, etc etc before following up with sanding block to take down the foam)
But after practicing with the trim plane I realize I’ve got quite the work cut out for me. Going to take quite a while to take the stringer down so far since the tips are quite thick. Starting at about 2” at the tip and taking it down to 3/4” for both tails. With the new rocker goal being 2.5” at each end, 1” @ 1’, 0.4” @ 2’.
Also been playing around with some acrylic paint and squeegee for a foam stain squeegee pull along the center of the board for a bit of color. (Going to tape off the stringer to make sure the glass can properly bond to the stringer)
But with so much time to think about the design, I’ve been going back and forth on rail design. Can’t make up my mind of what rail design to use. I’m torn between either making the whole rail line the same shape from tip to tip or since I have two tails, doing a normal hard edge at each end that transitions to maybe a 60/40 through the middle. Anybody have any thoughts on rail design and what could work well for a low rockered two tailed board? (Keel fin, and twingle fin setup)
Nice! It looks like a fun board! I really wanted to make a midlength in that range but the original board didn’t cooperate for me to get to that length. The nose channels really threw a wrench in my plans.
The channel is a very slight bevel from the stringer up to the tape edge. It doesn’t take much to make a difference. Operative word is “slight”. I’ll measure it with a straight edge and let you know what the depth is.
hey mate here is an old thread from way back, there is a bunch of stuff there from reshape to foam stain to general egg style board discussion to low rocker discussion.
check it out.
That’s perfect! Thanks!
The artwork turned out great! Were you just using acrylic paint? Airbrush? Watered down at all?
Also curious to hear how the second board turned out compared to the first? with the modifications suggested by Tudor and Howard. Especially how did the changes to the rails feel?
I think if I were doing a normal board what they suggested for the rails would probably be what I was planning.
But with it being a reversible two tail board is what’s throwing me for a loop. If I had a hard edge in the tails then I would have a nose with a hard edge. That’s kind of why I’m leaning towards a 60/40 rail with a softer edge on the tuck the whole rail line. That way either way I ride it the rail line would be consistent and not be too weird riding it one way.
I feel like deciding to do a two tailed board I’m accepting that I’ll need to make compromises on design. Won’t be as good as normal shaped board in theory but just wanting it to be ok ridden both ways.
I wish the longboard I used for foam had been more suitable for a 7ish egg. But beggars can’t be choosers and it was what was donated to me. Appreciative all the same.
Those nose channels really pushed me in much different direction.
Acrylic, watered down with methylated spirits, also known as denatured alcohol I think. The alcohol evaporates out of the foam better than water. Just applied with a few brushes. Next time I try flames I have to swap the order of colours. light on the inside dark on the outside.
Completely different board, more of a performance board rather than the cruiser that the 7 footer was.
For the low rocker I recommend having a less fin option. I often take it out in tiny clean waves with just the tiny side bite fins, super fun.
Cool, I’ll be sure to try denatured alcohol. I’m playing around with a squeegee pull and I felt the first couple try’s I had too much paint left on that I was worried might interfere with the foam-resin bond.
Gonna plan for keel fins on the wide point back/ wide tail side for smaller days to generate drive/ speed but trying out some sidebites on really small days sounds fun!
Finally got back to working on the board again.
Yesterday I spent setting the rocker by hand. I started with a small hand plane and trying out the stair step method greenlight suggested. I think it would have been a good method but either my blade isn’t sharp enough or I have the blade set at a bad angle or I need to learn how to use the tool better. Plus I had so much foam to take down and just using a hand plane would have taken ages!
So I switched to using a 2x4 sanding block the width of the board with some 40 grit belt sandpaper attached. Took down the foam much faster! But still need to get an electric planer, it took a while with the sandpaper.
However towards the end of the session I realized the original board had more v in it than I thought. Kind of stupid on my part for not checking or realizing. So I have more work getting the bottom flat. Also I have some slight bumps where I started accelerating the rocker that I need to blend in. And where the nose channels were the foam is quite a bit thicker than the other end so I need to even it out a bit.
Then this morning I had a little time before the rain came in from the typhoon so I decided to true up the outline. I started with a 90 degree post level but that left some small indents in the foam where it rested on top. So switched to a sanding block. I left myself a lot of foam when I cut out the outline so had to take off quite a bit of foam. Also at this point realized when I had traced out the outline that one side wasn’t really even with the other side. So ended up marking out measuring points every few inches to even out both sides.
I’m sure it’s not perfect by any means but I figure it’s probably close enough, maybe touch up a few spots. But I also don’t want to get so caught up in chasing symmetry that I end up taking off too much foam trying to fix it.
The ends are still a little thick, both are around 1 1/8” so need to thin them out a little bit more.
Some pictures of what it looks like right now.
Good work, take your time. Keep your sanding strokes long to try and keep everything even. It looks like you have a couple of little wobbles along the deck that you should be able to carefully blend back in with nice long strokes. It’s looking good. The hardest part at this stage is not to rush as it’s starting to look like a board now!
