currently designing a 5’5" 20.5 2.75 board with a fishy kind of outline. curious to see if anyone has any advice in regards to making a shorter groveler-esque board work better in good surf. thinking overhead to well overhead waves with push, located on oahu . I love short chunky boards and want to push em into as much as I can. I’m thinking a more parallel outline with a wing or hip that cuts to a pulled in round or swallow tail would be fun, not trying to reinvent the wheel, just looking for some groovy design ideas to increase drive and hold.
Its all about the fins. Toe in, Cant, flex and fin template.
If you want to test what I’m saying, take your favorite current board and ride a few waves with Performer fins then go in and change the fins to a set of Carvers.
Maybe one way to think about this is to go back to the beginning of the short/thick/wide design shift that I reckon really reached the mainstream with the Slater Wizard Sleeve.
I can’t find the original explanation, but I remember at the time Slater saying the basis of the design was to take the tail off a 6’10 (or so) semi-gun and blend it with a nose from a fish.
So many boards, but maybe most notably in terms of commercial success - Hayden Shapes Hypto Krypto - followed that logic.
Just for my taste and not trying to convince you not to go with the flyers but I think these boards work in larger and heavier surf (at least in part) because they have a rail line from a bigger wave board.
That is to say if you take the lines from a 6’10 or 7’0 Pipe gun (including the rocker, rails and concave) and blend everything with a paddle friendly nose, you should get something that paddles great but will hold when you get back over your fins for a heavy section.
You then get the added bonus of a shorter overall board that’s easier to turn. Anyway just a suggestion would love to see what you come up with.
Remember with big surf and fins you’re not necessarily looking for lift as much as hold because the wave is delivering excess power and you just want the board to feel more predictable.
I’d love to try and Surf your design!
I think that what aipa did will work well. So what you say about a wing and a round tail makes total sense. Just make sure there is enough curve in the back third and keep the rail volume down. If you add a rapid (rusty) entry and some bevels up front you will be planing sooner. But maybe you just drop into the barrel? If you do that then you can just skip that part.
What Jim Banks does now and Greg Webber (and bib mctavish also way back) works great too! A double concave inside the vee. All the way from nose to tail. Keel fins toed in at 1,00° 1,88" in and about 8/9" off tail.
Show us the board and the report,
Mahalo
Wouter
Everything guys say is good !
So flat rocker with parallèle outline thicker round rails front and lift, curvy, thin rails tails with Vee subtil double concave under, probably mckee style quad with low toe-in and cant. This is the kind of boards used here for heavy hollow barrel beachbreack.
Hi guys i totally forgot i made this thread! I ended up making a flat deck twin fin that has a wing swallow… board worked great! I couldve pulled in the tail more for sure… tell me what you guys think! I have made a few more boards since then. Im not sure if any of you guys are instagrammerz, but check out some of my projects at @opaladesigns. Or i can post em here and you can feel free to comment away about what you think… (excuse my overly aesthetic photos)
I should add, since it cant be seen… mild single that transitions to a double… tapered rails (as much as can be with a flat deck and sudden transition)… board worked fun in bigger but not super hollow surf… fast, skatey as twin plus trailers are… very fun
My go to groveller these days is an EPS Sharpeye Disco Cheater and it is amazing the difference in performance I can get out of this board by switching from Carbon Large Mayhem fins for true grovelling and then going to the inexpensive plastic Carver template fins in size Large when the waves are bigger.
If the waves are such that I have to generate my own speed by pumping the Carbon Mayhem template fins are amazing. With those fins though I hit a point where there is a sensation that the fins lose traction as speeds increase and the board stops working. That loss of traction actually makes me feel like I’m struggling to keep up as if there is a loss of speed and drive down the line. This seems to happen when the waves are shoulder high or bigger.
With the same board using the plastic Carver template fins the board performs very well even in waves that are well overhead. It wasn’t until my son got hooked up with FCS and we had a lot of sets of fins around the house that I realized how much changing the fins could change the characteristics of a board.
Old man riding that board a few days ago on a wave that was about at the upper limits of the carbon Mayhem fins. I was really wishing I’d had the Carver fins in the board during this session.
