Hi, anyone ever tried making traditional fish keel fins for future fins boxes? It would seem like a fin with such a long base it would be hard to get a snug fit to the board with the overhang behind the box or wyou would cover the screwhole in the front of the box with the overhang up front. Any suggestions? regards, Håvard
The fin would have to overhang aft. There would be no other way to secure the fin. But, with overhang, you could get the roll pin in the slot. You can always do what Clyde Beatty does and use Red X.
Hey Havard, Making fins for the Future fin system that have a base longer than the tab that inserts into the fin box is probably not too good of an idea. Getting the fin into to box with the tail of the fin hanging over the back of the box simply wouldn’t work. But there are answers tp the problem and there are two of them. One don’t use Future use RedX. I don’t know if they are making keel fins at Redx however. Two is to cut the front end off one future box and the back end of another and place them in the board end to end after you laminate them together externally to insure proper alignment. In this way the tab can be make nearly twice as long and you can put the keel fin in the box quite easily. A longer fin tab is the obvious answer for future systems and a couple of small tab extentions could be made to key into the rear of a standard fin tab so you could use fins with a standard length tab as well. If you want to make you own keel fins to fit into rail fin boxes I think this might be a better option and possibly a little easier because making the tapered and placing the female thread in the base of a RedX fin without the right tooling can be a daunting task. They do continue to expand the number of fin options at RedX so they may be able to help you. However if you are going to go to all the trouble of making this kind of set-up my question is what will be gained over glass-ons? Good-on-ya, Rich
One more thought on the Future approach – You can probably get away with sliding the routing jig far enough on the board surface to route the area appropriate to the sistered fin boxes so they’ll go right in. They way you can save some mounting problems. Aloha, Rich
We have made an injection molded keel fin yet. But, True Aimes makes laminated keel fins for Clyde Beatty that fit Red X. You could try contacting Clyde about availability.
Depending on the length of the base you could also intall an extra box in front of or behind the original box and have a two tab/box system. We used to use two short FU fin boxes this way back in the original 70’s keels. You only needed a bolt and plate in one of the boxes.
Hey Greg, Greg Webber here on Mayhems machine. Had some interesting questions on concave, on the surfer mag forum. gave you the overall credit for sending me on that path. Still remember Bill Hartley going crazy on that one he took to Angourie in 84 or 85, does it still exist…I’d love to see it again. GW
I don’t know if it does. My guess is that H loved it to death. He did have a certain notoriety for being lethel to his quiver. Well earned rep. He cost me a small fortune. How long are you at Lost…?