Thanks, Huck! And everyone else who’s keeping up with this first build and giving me encouragement and advice! It means a lot!
I’ve been so impressed with this site and what you guys have built in this online community! It’s absolutely incredible!
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Well, finally got around to doing the rails. Ended up doing a more boxy type rail using the rail band chart from green light surf.
I think they turned out ok! I left a hard edge at both ends at about 18”.
But I took the board outside to take a better look and I bent over to pick something up and the wind blew and knocked it over!
Left some pretty big gouges on one side of the rails.
So now I have an extra step in fixing that gouged foam. I have left over foam from the rest of the board so I’m gonna glue some of that foam in to fill the holes.
Anybody have any suggestions?
Should I just use something like gorilla glue or resin?
Try some moisture plus heat first. Be careful not to overdo the heat, but like a wet towel with an iron over. A lot of times compression type dings will disappear or mostly so, maybe just little spacle to finish up.
Moisture and heat, I’ll give it a try! Do I just place a damp or wet towel over the area and then apply some heat?
Do I actually need to get the area wet? Like rub the wet towel in the damaged area? Or just place it over the top?
I haven’t heard of this method before so I might have some questions.
Thanks, Huck!
Yes, iron over wet towel.
Homework: reading assignment
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Of course in the archives! Thanks.
Oh no, what a shame, it looks like you’d done a really nice job! Huck to the rescue, this community is awesome with the knowledge and happiness to share. I hope you get the worst of it sorted.
I know right! I was so happy and then immediately so sad.
Someone else suggested trying a hair dryer for the heat. I might try that first since I don’t have an iron but I’m thinking Hucks suggestion of iron/wet towel will probably be the solution to get the worst of it and then a little spackle should solve it. At least I’m hoping. I don’t really want to try cutting and gluing in foam to fill it. I’m kind of hesitant of that because I don’t know how good of a job I could do of getting it to fit snugly.
I had to mess around with the rail markings and bands a bit because the deck already rolled down to meet the rails. So when I went to make the rail markings I didn’t really have a lot of thickness to really follow the suggested rail markings. Especially with the tuck, I ended up doing the bottom tuck last so I ended up making the tuck 1/8” on the bottom and sides.
I think I might have overworked the rails when I was screening to blend in the rail bands and probably ended up messing with the outline a little bit and I keep seeing areas that I could probably blend in better but I figure it’s good enough and the more I try and do I’ll end up overworking it.
I think the hardest thing was blending in the rails to the hard edge. I definitely don’t have a smooth transition from the rounder rail section in the middle to the hard edges at the ends. I couldn’t quite figure out how to get that smooth transition.
I did something similar with an early build. Ended up using dry wall putty to patch it. There is a full thread of that build in here somewhere.
I used to struggle with this, until I learned to bring the hard edge in a bit from the perimeter. That way you can better transition from the rounded rail.
So here’s some pics. Unfortunately, its kind of a subtle thing for the camera to pick up on, but hopefully you can see the hard edge is not right out at the edge of the rail, but kinda tucked in a little. So the rail wraps under, but then the hard edge is just a little in from the edge. And hopefully you can see, and it will make sense, that this enables you to make a much more logical and smooth transition from round rail to hard edge.
Thanks, Huck! That makes a lot of sense and great tip! I’ll see what I can do to make that transition smooth.
Finally got the iron today so going to see how repairing the gouges go! I’ll report back on how it goes.
Iron/ wet towel method to repair a damaged pu blank worked beautifully! Took all of two minutes. Still probably need to put a tiny bit of spackle to fill some voids and sand it all flush.
Thanks again @Huck real life saver!
Was able to talk with a local shaper and he’s gonna walk me through glassing and fin box install and just charge me for materials! Super thankful, glassing was the main step I was pretty worried about. Probably get to that in November some time after the local surf comps finish.
But recently I’ve been thinking through and reading up on fins, specifically Twinzers.
And I’m thinking about running the wide point back tail as a Twinzer. I’ve always been curious about surfing a Twinzer but never had a chance and I figure if I don’t like surfing it as a Twinzer I can just take out the canards and surf it as a twin.
So after a lot of reading this is the placement I’m thinking. If anyone has any suggestions or thoughts on this I’d greatly appreciate it!
Fcs2 Fin Boxes for mains and canards
Main Fins:
7.5” from tail
5* cant, 3/16 toe
1.25” in from the rail
Canards:
3/8” overlap with main fins
9* cant, 3/16 toe (parallel to main fins)
1 1/8” slot between canard and main fin
I know a lot of people say Jobson puts his mains at 8.75” but I figure if I keep it to 7.5” I have some flexibility with using it as a normal twin fin or even keel fins if the Twinzer setup isn’t something I like.
I’ve also read some shapers prefer setting the canards and main fins at different toe in.
Or adjusting the overlap closer together for tighter turns or further apart for hold and drive.
But since I’ve never surfed a Twinzer I don’t really have any personal reference points for all of this other than what I read in the archives and that’s kind of all over the place.
So if anyone’s got any suggestions.
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Alright been a little while but spent the last two weeks working on glassing the board with a local shaper who walked me through it.
Thankful I had the teaching! I found glassing to be more simple than I thought it would be but at the same time a bunch of small little steps that made it easier I would have missed doing if I did it on my own which probably would have made it a lot more difficult.
Ended up doing a 6x4, 6 with epoxy resin but a gloss coat in poly.
The twingle fin boxes are at 6” from the tail and about 2” in between. (The fin boxes look off center because the foam stain I did wasn’t perfectly down the middle)
Twin fin boxes are at 7.5” from tail, 5 degrees cant, and 1/8 toe. (But after installing I’m thinking they look pretty far back…)
Got some 7” single fins, K2 keel fins, and some upright twin fins to try out with the board.
I finally got to see the board under some proper shaping lights and found a section in the rocker wasn’t as smooth as I thought or maybe some bumps in the outline. But overall I’m so pumped to be finished and can’t wait to try it out!
Just wanted to say thank you to everybody for helping me out! And when I finally get it in the water I’ll be back with a ride report for both sides.
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That’s looking great! The double leash plugs mess with me looking at the deck!!! I’m looking forward to hearing how it goes, hopefully 2 totally different riding boards in 1?!
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Took her out yesterday for her first ride. Waves were a little messy with the wind and a higher tide. Would get some bigger sets maybe head high every now and then. Waves were backside for me.
Since I had been surfing all single fins for the last six months I decided to jump on the twin fin side for my first try and threw on some upright twins.
Board paddles nice and duck dives pretty easy. But I had some trouble getting used to the board. On bigger waves when I would drop in and try for a deep bottom turn the first couple waves my tail slid out. So started nursing my bottom turns but then had problems going back up the wave from the bottom turn.
I’m thinking could be a few reasons (other than my skill level and poor backside technique). I think maybe the twin fins are further back than I am used to (I’m more of a front footed surfer from surfing a lot of longboards and midlengths) so I’m not getting my backfoot all the way back to above the fins. Plus I noticed with the two single fin boxes in the nose of the board it adds a noticeable weight to the nose. So when I would try going back up the wave too sharply after a bottom turn I would catch rail because I wasn’t back far enough and not putting enough weight on the tail to lift the nose out of the water. The other reason I thought of was maybe the low rocker on head high waves was causing me some problems so maybe not ideal conditions for the board.
So after a lot of wipeouts and me being a kook for a couple hours I grabbed one last wave in and decided to stop trying to force the board and just have a chill ride in. “Best” wave of the day for me when I stopped trying to force the board or trying to surf it like another board.
So I think I need to obviously improve my backside surfing but also adjust my stance so I’m further back on the board as well as using my weight more to lift the heavier nose out of the water in turns.
Even though it wasn’t the most successful surf I’m still pumped about the board and excited that I need to work at figuring out how this board wants to be surfed. I always love these moments in surfing when I’m trying to figure out how to surf a new board.
I’ll be back with another ride report for the twin fin side after I get it out on some frontside waves. Then I’ll probably play around on the Twingle setup before trying out the keel fins I got.
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