It’s been a year since I’ve posted here. Hope there are still some old friends out there. Here’s my question. I just completed a 10’ noserider that basically is a CON Ugly knock off. While shaping this board I think I was visited by John Peck’s spirit as I seem to have had an out of body experience. I remember very little about the experience . When I woke up and the foam dust settled I saw that most of the foam at the first 36 inches or so from the tip of the nose bacwards was mowed down to only 1" thickness. ( the Con Ugly’s were not much thicker up there but still…) Truth is I just lost my focus and screwed up but don’t tell anybody. SO , my question is this. What are the odds that this thing will still nose ride. The floatation is what i’m not sure about unless once a board is planning properly floatation at the nose becomes a non issue while nose riding kinda like what happens with a skim board. Other boar dimensions and details are as follow. Nose 19"…width 23"…tail 16 1/2" …thickness 3 1/4" . The tail has a pretty good tail flip like the old Ugly and the nose has a decent rocker in it which should flex down like the “Benders” of yore were supposed to do as the nose is so thin. The attached is the best picture I had at the time of this post that by file size was allowable.
It’s not the floatation, it is the planing characteristics. Skim boards barely float, don’t be afraid, ride it and MAKE it work for you (who does number two work for)
Looks like there’s enough nose width up there to perch for days. What kind of blank is that and did it come with the colored foam? Nice…I had this weird dream that we picked up Mike Doyle hitch hiking on the north shore and I was trying to get him to shape me a board like the one he rode in Puerto Rico in 1968.
The blank was a custom order 10’ 1" Y supergreen from Clark. Highdensity green foam is 1" and the blue foam on either side is 1/2" all with black glue ups. The stringers are two 3/16 basswood. Even though the nose thickness got thinner than I had planned the extra foam and double stringers along with the double six oz deck/ 6 oz. bottom and a two inc lap should provide enough strength so it won’t snap off right away. I glassed in a 10 1’2 " Takyama nose rider fin last night and the board looks tight now. Just have to touch up a few minor holes from air bubles during lamination and a glosscoat and polish and I’m ready for the weekend.
first off i suck at noseriding so my offer will be a very good litmus test for you. send me the board and let me ride it this summer, i’ll tell you whether it can noseride.
this offer goes for anyone else that would like to test a board.
The board looks sweet,I love the inserts,and with that foil(3-1/4") it seems like it would be fine. I also like that “shovelnose” look ,you’ll have to let us know how she tip rides. How long a wait for a custom blank? And how much of a price difference for a custom blank like that? Thanks…peace and waves…
You know I thought it would take them longer than it did. I don’t think I waited more than 2 weeks for it. I order form the East Coast Dist. Ctr. from Richie and E.J. They’re great. I guess I must have caught 'em on a day they were sending in their orders for the week. It was in a container and back at my doorstep very quickly. Clark mails out an annual newsletter or update from the Pres. and he said that they have tried very hard to do things operationally to speed up production. Maybe that played into it. My cost on this blake in October/Nov. of '03 was $198.00. I had ordered some thick triple tringers from them a couple years ago and it was pretty much the same price. I’m told that every time they make acut and have to glue up stringers and or foam it adds cost simply due to the labor invoved. Nice effect though. Kinda scary when you start cutting though cause it would be a costly proposition to screw it up. Which I really did but managed to salvage it to some degree.
Had another question relative to the “planning " characteristics. I had attempted a concave in the nose like the original UGLY but lost it as I had to correct some rather significant uneveness that I created by not paying attention to what I was doing. Now the bottom of the nose is really just flat up there. I’ve been told that concaves are not necessarily mandatory for decent planning. The overall bottom is gently rounded from about 40” back from the nose and carries thru to the tail section. Bottom of rail line is turned up and is soft from mid section to tail to allow water to lapp over the rail and flow over the tail section. What do I need to pay attention to when I’m creating a longboard so it will have “proper planning characteristics”? Is the planning solely a bottom issue?
If you watch some of the really great noseriders, you will often see them perched right on the tip with no water under the first 2-3 feet of the nose. The rail, bottom and tail are so much more important on noseriding than just a big fat nose. I shudder at all the orders I get for 20 and 21" wide noses, if anything, these boards noseride poorer than a much narrower nose. Huge noses don’t hold in on hollow sections and are crutches for getting on the tip when you are miles ahead of the curl.
Ghunt, does your narrow nose on your 11 footer nose ride well?
yea jim im 100% with ya on that one …my platform noses ,noseride well in open water ,but get harder to break away with control when your hanging in a critical section…i had one board with a 17.5 " nose and im still claiming it was one of my best pocket nose riders ,you could set up for a nose ride so quickly coz of the increased outline curve,plus it let water over the deck closer to the nose locking it in better,and when things really got heavy and it was do or die time…you could get of of trouble way quicker and easier and you wernt forced into lines you didnt wanna take…the one area it didnt like was real down the line hang time with speed ,where you couldnt get a decent amount of water over the tail,then it wouldnt hold a good line and tended to wanna turn up the face and drop out…but with everything else the same the straighter outlines would hold those lines…
ive been doing alot of different stuff lately in the deck area especially around the tail …coz when your nose riding your relying on water over your deck ,so it stands to reason you could shape contours into your deck to help water flow where you want it…
Jim, the board’s solid on the tip. Granted it’s a long board, but the nose is only 16" and holds 165lbs of me just fine. What’s more frightening about the 11-1 1/2 is how EASY it is to cranks turns even on small waves. Did I mention it’s fast? I also like the pinched tail design - as Surfore says, you make 'em sensitive.
I can confirm the narrow nose bit as one of the best days of surf I can remember was a really nice south swell at Tamarindo about 4’ overhead. I was riding a 9’0" Stylist II Surfboards Hawaii re issue. It has very eggy, soft rails that pulls back into the sweetest rounded pintail alot like some of your templates and a narrower soft pointed nose. I was all over the nose on that thing. I was haulin ass and just perched there with no indication of pearling whatsoever. So I realize that nose width is not a pre- requisite for a good nose rider just from personal experience. You opened the door with the planning comment and I realized I couldn’t answer the question my self…but I can now. Thanks again.
Regarding the execution of an optimal noserider, how important is the flex issue in the nose area. The old benders and step-decks went for thin nose areas, as alluded to in previous posts on this subject. What about a balsa noserider where it just isn’t going to flex as much as foam…should you go thinner or thicker in the nose area on a balsa board? Should you shy away from multi stringers on a true noserider to allow more flex?
Hey Richard, there was a surf movie, ala 5 summer stories era, chock full of nose riding. A segment at Cotton’s, with Corky riding a Hobie that had a really flipped up, super thin nose. When he would plant both feet on the tip for some quality nose time, you could “see” the nose bend down and flatten out, maybe about 5-6". Corky would have his toes wrapped around the underside of the nose, just holdin’ on (these were head high waves)
yea richard you get the best of both worlds then ,increased rocker for turns and performance oriented manouvers,and like jim said thay flaten out when your on the nose ,i like to keep mine flexy ,but not over do it ,so they become flappy and floppy ,coz that becomes a hinderence to your performance style manouvers,
but at the end of the day the flex nose ,noserider,is definatly better on smaller days …
Thanks much for the comments and wisdom on flex. What are your thoughts relative to balsa and multiple stringers? Is a well executed balsa board going to noseride less effectively than a foam board of similar quality shaping? Assume the more stringers the less flex which degrades the whole aspect of nose flex?? What do you say?
Well Richard, I never design a board with flex in mind. When I put in a rocker, it is to do what THOSE curves are intended to do. I had a board that delam’d for most of the deck, but was still water tight, it WAS a ripper, but once the cloth came loose, it sucked. It no longer had any spring out of a turn, it had become a fat girl, sigh!
I don’t think a balsa board is going to flex and the Model “A” 9’6" Surfboards Hawaii I did out of chambered balsa nose rode like a champ, it is heavy as crap (George Robinson’s wood). It did no paddle take offs so easy too.
