Good evening one and all, being my first post on these forums i would entatively like to ask for some assistance. well not asistance but some input would be ace!
I am a first time shaper however thats not my problem (yet!), but essentially i am torn between what board to make… i surfed for a few years before university but having had about 2 years off am now finding my little toothpick 6’8" thruster a bit more than i can handle. i am really drawn to the idea of a 6’8" retro style board, about 3’ thick and 22’ wide (see attachment for blank shapes) however i dont know if that’d still be a bit too short for me. my friend recently reccomended that i go for a 7’9" blank and cut it down to about 7’4" to get the width in the tail.
South coast surfing in the uk is my scene so waves are often mushy at best, however i like being able to duck dive so dont fancy going for a massive board!
Any ideas/advice that you could throw my way would be much appreciated, i am very aware of my newbe status but am willing to learn!
I think the 6’8", as a single or a 2+1, but I like them both.
I’d knock 2.5" out of the nose rocker on that mini-mal though, and maybe put .5 or 1 or a bit more into the tail, if you want to noseride it, which I do.
yeah i did wonder about a 2+1 set up, i was going to order from homeblown but i see seabase are doing a rather nice looking deal with a 7’3" blank with 2+1 fins… what kind of tail would you reccomend with that then? i was thinking of a rounded squash however a diamond or round tail would be a better option for when i go with just the single fin surely?
I dunno. Put some different ones on it, and see what you like. I might just leave it like that, I might pull it a bit and put a diamond on it, look at some old boards and think on it, but to tell you the truth, for planing surface and volume, and ease of manufacture, I’d leave it at that, and call it a stub.
ok a bit of an update, went and shaped a 7’3" with a diamond tail:
quite happy with it at the moment, though i do feel that i might want to take the deck curve further down towards the rails… also the tail is mahoosive at the moment! kinda liking it but what will this mean when i come to surf it? sure i’m showing my lack ok knowledge here but what better place to ask? maybe i’ll make the rails a bit harder and boxier at the tail, seems to be all the rage in these large retro/egg kinda shapes. kept loads of volume in the board, cant think its much less than 3" in the middle (accurate measurements coming soon).
fin set up should be fun too, got a 2+1 with a 6 or 7 inch center fin and future sidebites… when they turn up! placements? thinking center fin 5" from the tail then sidebites around 12" up.
bear in mind that uk waves are often less than great and this is for my re-introduction to surfing, any comments/suggestions/input would be great!
Your out line looks clean. Did you use a power plane to shape it?
It’s difficult to tell from the photo but that tails does look on the fat side, How wide is it, It looks about 17" to me. if it is I’d bring it in a bit. A wide tails is great for catching waves but no so hot rail to rail or for bottom turns.
I’d go hard down rail in the last 16" of the tail (looks like you’ve already turned these), 60/40 boxy in the mid section (looks about right but mabye take a bit more from the deck to give a fuller foil) 50/50 slightly pinched out in the nose.
A boxier rail is great fun in our waves but keep it to the mid sectio. I would definately thin that nose out, it looks thick and boxy, could just be the pics.
There’s a shadow on the second pic that looks like a bump in the transition from nose to mid section, smooth that out if it is, so all the curves “flow”
Your fin placment sounds about right, if you thin the tail width I’d be tempted to move the cntr fin to 6" and the side bites to 12.5 or 13", toe in 1/8 and cant site bite at 4 degrees.
Post some more pics as you go and let us know how it rides.
hey guys, after the woes of my computer breaking my resin, fins, leash plug, squeegee etc all turned up! finally…
so its been a busy few days, just to fill you in:
no power tools used for the shaping,
so i’m pretty happy with the outcome! tail is only 12" wide, and 17" wide a foot up. the wide point is just forward of the center (if i remember correctly?) and measures 23". finally it is 18" 1 foor down from the nose and roughly 3" thick in the center section.
thinned the nose out considerably, it was boxy but that was more as i hadnt finished shaping! cheers for the advice on the rails woody, before they just kind of happened, now i have taken them a bit harder at the back, boxy then to a nice rounded rail at the front. truth be told they still are pretty rounded all the way down but the shape is there now!
lamination was… fun? no it was good though i could have done it so much better! check out the ugly laps:
one of the logo:
after sanding the hot coat:
as you can see, stuck my plug in, do the center fin tomorrow then start the gloss…
oh a quickie of my fin set up:
and my late christmas present! glassy 2-3ft joy on boxing day, isle of wight.
cheers for all your help thus far and all the best in the new year!
cheers, with a bit of persuasive sanding the laps are all but invisible now.
final sand and buff to do then time to try this baby out!
woody: john doesn’t ring a bell, depends where he taught. though not to rule it out as the isle is the kind of place to throw up strange coincidences like that…
