Wood it be possible to make a wood longboard fin for a fin box? I’ve searched and found some info on making fins for glassing on, but cant find anything about a box fin.
It doesn’t seem like it wood be that hard a thing to do. The only weak link, and problem I can for see wood be where the bolt goes through to hold it in the box.
I’m guessing a marine grade plywood wood be the best material, but what type of finish wood hold up best?
Thanks,
Wood
No problem. Cut & foil the wood (and paint it if you want). Lam up a strip of glass - or a whole panel of random corner offcuts & other otherwise-wasted glass from board laminations & extra resin - and cut it into a 3/8" tall strip, ground to the same thickness as your wood. Glue them together & laminate a few layers of glass over both, tying them together. Regrind & foil the whole thing. Cut the outline again on a bandsaw or with a jigsaw. The key part is making your first base part the same thickness as the wood. After that, everything follows together fine.
When you drill out the screw hole, have the bin base clamped securely in a vice, so it doesn’t expand & split open. That sucks.
For many more, much nicer fins, search ‘Halcyon’…
“fin base moulding”
and “moulding fin bases”
were two threads that dealt with this , too…
cheers !
ben
p.s. - I surfed this in my 9’ mal [‘longboard’] today …one I made a while ago …
…that’s an epoxy resin base moulded onto a plywood fin…
Some help for you…
Finbox fin flanges are 0.350 inches thick and 1 inch deep.
Old school wood fins used 2 layers of 10 oz volan on each size to stiffen them up, and roving on the leading edge so that if you rammed the fin into something it wouldn’t expose the wood to water. You will need glass on both sides and roving on the leading edge. The trailing edge is nice too…if I were doing it I would use 5 layers of 6 oz on each side. The fin flange will be plenty strong with 5 layers of 6 oz on each size.
And remember, unsealed wood will rot. It needs to watertight in a way that glass fins do not.