I’m attempting to build my first board. It will be a fish and I’m going to build it out of a block of EPS using templates with a hot wire cutter. I’m still playing around with the outline but so far it will be 6’0" x 22 (3" forward of center) with a 16" nose and tail, 2 3/4" thick. These dimensions are based on various boards I like and some tweaking on AKU shaper. The problem is the rocker. So far I have played around with rocker recommendations of as much as 2 1/2" tail and 5" nose and as little as 3 1/2"Nose and 1 1/2" tail. I’m totally new to this but I know I don’t want too much rocker. I’m interested in wave catching ability and stability. This will be my first shortboard. The other problem is: I have basically been using the center width, nose rocker, and tail rocker in AKU shaper and just using the tangents to smooth out the line. I don’t know how the thickness should be treated through the entire board. Any help would be appreciated. Please bear in mind I’m new at this.
3 1/2 nose and 1 1/2 tail sound about right. How the foam is distributed throughout the board is the foil. I think it takes a lot of boards to get good at it. I foil it by eye and like them a little on the thick side for floatation, paddling, etc. Mike
Rocker specs look good to me. You could go slightly flatter in the tail if you give it heavier vee. Keeping your rocker curve a nice, single, continuous curve, like you’re doing, is a good thing.
As far as thickness goes, I like my thickest point to be at the widepoint, with my nose and tail thicknesses a foot from the ends to be about the same. Normally the tail is a bit thicker than the nose, but on retro fish, they’re closer to the same so that the volume the board loses due to it’s short length can be made up in thickness. If you go with 2 3/4 at the thick point, which is a few inches ahead of center, I’d go about 1 3/4 thick both at a foot back from the nose and a foot up from the tail. You might even go a touch thicker than that in the nose area if you can’t get a good, smooth foil from the pushed-forward thick point. It’s a pretty short distance from the wide point to the nose, so if it ends up slightly thicker in the nose than the tail, that’s ok. Then beak it down to a point at the tip. To do that is easy if you use a more angular, down rail. The angular bands maintain their angle, but narrow until they come together at the nose to form the beak.
Thanks very much to both of you for your feedback. And for answering my next question regarding whether the thickness point should at the widepoint. I wasn’t sure about that.
I like 3 1/2 from the apex (oh no… here we go again…) which is also my wide point and thick point. If I center the board on my rack, the highest point (rocker apex) should be three inches ahead of center. A leveled stick tangent to that point should show 3 1/2 inches of nose rocker, and 1 1/2 inches of tail rocker, before the swallow is cut and before the vee is cut.