Dang if I didn’t screw the hell up. Its been a minute since I shaped a board and I flew threw the fin box install.
I generally use FCS ii and for this particular board I made it a five fin. After install, I noticed that i put the boxes on the wrong sides. The 5 degree cant angle is leaning inward.
My initial reaction is to scrap it, bit I’ve seen some crazy new fin variations. Has anyone surfed inward cant before? How did it handle on turns, etc. The board is 22"s wide, 6’10" with a deep concave bottom.
Wow. So based on your words and photo you did not put fins into the boxes until after you set them. Be interesting to see how it rides maybe you just created a revolutionary design. Or not
Sorry I don’t have any helpful input, that’s quite a can of worms you got there
I’ve done fins canted toward the stringer before, circa 1971. They really stiffen up the response to turning, compared to fins canted toward the rail. What that means is that you can reduce the size/area of the fins, and still get the desired performance result. I did a range of fin experiments, at that time. Found out some interesting things.
I mean I put a futures box in backwards once and found out right before I did the fill coat. Shit happens. Didn’t surf the board that way though, which certainly would have been interesting.
You could just ignore the boxes and glass on some fins? That’d look extremely odd but it’d be functional. Finishing it and surfing it for a bit so you learn something about the board and know what to change for V2 seems like a good idea. Put the fins the other way around so the foil is wrong, flat outside if they’re flat fins, but the cant is correct? Does that work on FCS II?
…this occurs because FCS are full of themselves and still do not understand that is a big gap between 5º and 9º boxes. 5 is almost not so much in most situations and 9º if you do not have a concave is barely good (only for kids with hot dogs summer HP boards)
Is like Bill is saying; a solution now is to use small fins if you want to move the board in small turns but in that case you will lack of thrust or drive. Might be a mix of fins. Flex fins and rigid ones, bigger and smaller.
If you put the fins in normally (e.g. non-foiled side toward the stringer) your setup will create the opposite of lift (drag?). However, if you put the fins in with the foiled side toward the stringer you might create enough lift to get an interesting response. Give it a shot.
Try to find a set of FCS H2 fins. The have about 7 degrees of cant built in. That will offset the reverse cant. I use zero cant with these fins and I think they are the best setup I have.
You could try laying up your own fins with extra cant built in to the tabs. Not a terribly difficult task… just add an angle to the panel on which you do your lay up. Or… think up some sort of gimmicky name for your new invention, add some mumbo-jumbo ‘theory’ sales pitch and run with it. You did it on purpose, right? Hippies love that shit and will fall all over themselves to buy a set.
So I checked on the H2s and they look like they may work. According to FCS, they have a 10° cant. I only wanted 5°, so this should balance out, kinda, sorta-ish.
