Hey swaylocks peeps. Im a pretty fresh noob at surfing. I have started to build a 7’9" short longboard ish thing HaHa. I live in Ontario Canada and will be riding mostly small squashy waves in lake Erie. I also go to the Outer Banks in North Carolina every year to do some real surfing. I am shaping one board out of EPS and one out of XPS. Im leaving the center about 3 inches thick because I want as much float as possible. I am following the dimensions from the 7’9" blank from the US blank catalog ( http://www.usblanks.com/catalog/?tid=3&id=25 ) and just trying to shape the rocker down from there. I was just wondering if anyone could give me some suggestions on what to do with my rails and bottom contour. I was thinking front third concave (above 1/8 inch) to flat middle third and v shape tail third. Does that make sense? I was going to do 50/50 rails but was unsure at what point to tapper them down at the tail. Any help would be awsome.
How many boards have you built?
If these are your first, I suggest flat bottoms. Also, please please please study the railband thread.
For the lake waves bottom probably not going to make much noticeable difference. For the “real surfing”, that’s another story. More info needed tho, pictures of planshape, rocker, foil (as planned) would help. As well as pictures of what you are currently riding at both places.
Entry concave is acts as a break, and slows you down. Vee in the tail may make the board stiff.
HA I’ve actually built the nearly exact same board. It’s 8’x20.5"x3", single to flat to vee. It’s roughly concave for 1/3 of the nose, then flat, and I don’t recall how far the vee goes up. Looks like this (Round pin end is the tail, nose is square) You haven’t mentioned your outline or anything but here’s what I did.
BUT I have yet to ride it cause the surf has been terrible. And I was busy on all the good swells. My rails are pretty much all thinner, hard and down type rails. I wanted speed, and hopefully some sensitivity since this is a huge board for me. The tail gets real thin. I don’t recall exactly where I started the hard edge in the tail, but there’s many threads on that subject. I have a build thread for this here where many of the excellent people on here weigh in on my silly ideas and post some of their boards. Rail shape gets talked about. To summarize, I did the single for some lift at the nose, ignoring the possibility of slowing me down because I figured this is such a big board my paddling will still be much better than anything else I ride. Flat for… flatness I guess? Vee to maybe help me turn it off the tail. A little drag is fine. It’s a huge board.
It’s got a hips back type shape. Meant to be used in new jersey for general longboarding/noseriding. I’m 120lbs and short so this is likely enough board for me.
I’d love to tell you how it rides, mainly because that’d mean I actually get to ride it… If things go well I have my chance in a few days. I’m not familair with great lakes surfing (other than that it only seems to be good in the absolute worst weather?) or the outer banks but… I’ll see how this goes.
Thanks for the reply guys. Honestly I am still learning to surf. I bet that I wouldnt notice the difference with any design details. But i thought it would be fun to try and make a decent board to grow into. These 2 are my first attempts. This past summer I just bought a beater 6 6 fat fish because it was cheap.
I will post some pics over the next couple days. All the help is appreciated since I dont have a clue in hell as to what im doing.
Here is a couple kinda weak photos. The middle is about 30 inches wide, 3 inches thick. The nose rocker is only like 3 inches. Is that enough? I had to bend the foam to the stringer so it was a bit harder to get the 5 inches I have read a nose rocker should have. I hope mine looks as sick as yours when it is done Mr. Zoid.
I was planning on keeping the dimensions pretty close to the blank. I’m a big dude at 220 lbs. More foam the better.
Hello Burnyburn-welcome to the jungle. You already got some good advice/ideas so far.
I think at this point you are going to want to optimize the plan shape of your design to go with the rocker and thickness of the blanks you made. I’d think about a little narrower tail than that 7-9H blank comes stock, my first couple were scary too big to be very useful.
I would say post up your proposed outline with the basic dims and see if you get some more comments.
Some more questions for you:
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Do you have any ‘real’ surfboards for reference? Getting one helped me as a landlocked noob, especially to understand a little more about rail and foil. If you are comfortable with computer stuff, looking at a good board design in Aku or BoardCAD or the like can give you a chance to study rails, foils, bottoms, etc…that said, having a board to see and grab is worth hours on the 'puter.
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Have you met up with the local Lake Erie crew and see what they are riding? Met the local shapers?
My other suggestion would be to get decent 6oz. cloth and surfboard-grade epoxy resin when you get that far.
All the best, J
In surfboard shaping, some lessons are best learned the hard way. Sometimes an excursion a short way down the wrong path, will put your feet on the right path, with a valuable lesson learned. Just remember, Thomas Edison created the light bulb, by creating a lot of non-light bulbs first.
There is NO such thing as a “short” longboard. Call it what you will, but longboard doesn’t enter into it at seven foot.
Burny-B, I missed the comment that you have a 6’6" fish, sorry my bad.
Thinking about this more…What would it look like to disassemble the EPS (more familiar to me) blank and rebuild it into a 9’ x 25" x 3" by gluing the old foam proud to a new finished stringer, using pieces with angled PU glue joints (think barrel staves) instead of bending the foam to make the nose rocker? It’s extra work but would give you another option for a blank for this build. I say 9’ because I have a 7’-11" x 23" x 3.25" board that feels a bit small and I have a few pounds on you.
Ask questions, have fun, take it easy. -J
25" for width is a very wide… I wouldn’t suggest going over about 23"…
There are two issues you will find:
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It’s hard to carry; most people won’t be able to get their arm around that.
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When you sit on it, it will make your hips and/or knees hurt because of the angle that your legs hang off the sides of the board.
All interesting points. I’m a little sketchy on having too many glue joints. I took the width down to 24". What should the minimum nose rocker height be? Also does the type of fin really matter for a noob? I was thinking of just order fcs fins off ebay.
Hi Burny-
It seems like you are really stoked to start; however, this is a good time to pause and work through some of the details. The more you can tell us the more likely someone will have constructive input for you. It will still be up to you to make the final call.
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Tell us how your blanks look rocker-wise in comparison to the 7’9" sheet you posted. Some say that overall rocker is design element #1 in a surfboard.
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Tell us your specific plan for an outline (nose shape, width at 12", location of wide point and width, tail shape and widths…) -or even better-draw it out on paper, lay it on the blank, and post a picture before you cut it out. If rocker is #1, outline is #2, rails could be #3, fins would be #4…and all are related.
As long as you use fin boxes, you can always change the fins themselves, provided they are laid out in a decent fashion. Have you decided on brand and what sort layout? Pre or post glass? Install jigs or freehand?
Glue-ups can be a neccessary evil or elevated to a design feature- intentional glue lines and custom stringers with ‘secret sauce’. Check out stuff by Barry and Mattwho.
None of this is meant to insult your intelligence or slow your progress, just trying to lay out some of issues that you will want to work through before cutting more foam and saying ‘uh-oh, I should have thought of this earlier…’
Looking forward to your success, J
My planned layout is the layout of this blank. I shaped it from a block. Are these functional dimensions without altering them? It will basically be like buying this blank shaping the rails and glassing it.
I know j randy said I should narrow the tail. What would you suggest
IF I read this correctly.
I work the rocker and outline for a particular board and go to the catalog.
#1 work within the parameters of the blank you chose.
Finally any good, bad or ugly shaper uses side lights.
#2 Stop think while you are installing the side lights, eh, it is important with the height, check the archives or PM me.
Best to you.
