After seeing Greg Griffin’s beautiful G10 fin creations, I have always wanted to give G10 a try. Recently, I found a piece of 1/4" thick G10 for $9. Here it is reconstructed after cutting it out with a jig saw.
Note: I have only successfully made one fin before.
The fin
that I previously made was similar in shape to this design. I’m very happy with how well it has worked as a
single fin, so I am now going to try doing a Thrailkill style twin fin setup.
First, I made a template from plywood, stuck the G10 to it with Super 77, and routered around it with a flush trim bit.
Here are the fins side-by-side before being foiled.
Here is the first fin that I foiled. I haven’t done the second one yet.
Obviously, my work is not perfect like Greg Griffin’s. I think that G10 is great for a beginning fin builder. The many lines visible from the weave give you a lot of guidance on how even your foil is coming along.
Kawika swears by the single (assym) foil with flats on the outside. I got mine symmetrically foiled, but plan on ordering a second set of Brewers with the assymetrical.
I’ve got this project kicked started after some very generous help from Kawika and Sr. Thrailkill.
Props to Bill for being so generous with his knowledge, lore, templates and time.
A huge thanks to David for showing me what a clean and organized shaping area should look like.
Where did you get G10 for that cheap? I looked into it a while back
and I think I remember it being quite a bit more expensive than that.
I found it in the main store at Ridout Plastics. It was just sitting there with a $9 price sticker on it. I thought it seemed cheap as well. It was next to a bunch of odd shaped pieces. Maybe they thought this was an odd shape, and marked it down.
these particular fins are smaller than what I normally ride in it, but using
the “lay the fin over” technique, I’ve got a similar amount of surface area
exposed beyond the rail line.
PS. I found your PB bit…strangest thing…it was in the router.
It looks like you overfoiled that fin, unless you were going for that look on purpose. I do like the flat outside and foiled inside set-up of Bill’s. I have tried both ways, but this works best in my humble opinion.
It looks like you have enough G10 leftover to template and foil a set of keels and also a set of sidebites… don’t let those cuts go into the scrap bin!
