I’m still giddy with the smell of resin, little sleep and several cups of tea, but please oblige me your patience.
I’ve been working on a board for me Kimmy. She’s only starting to surf, and struggles with paddling. She’s normally quite tough, but I guess she hasn’t yet developed wave-catching guns yet. She’s ~173cm (~5’10 for those clinging to an archaic, flawed system of units), 65kg (~140lb as above) and is fine at standing, balancing, etc when she does catch a wave.
I build HWS boards—hollow cedar or Paulownia. They are more bouyant for a given volume (meaning you can get away with shallower profiles), and they carry a bit more mass therefore momentum. This means that winding it up is a little harder from a stand-still (though perhaps offset by the floatation…), but will carry more momentum through flat sections of a wave.
It will be ‘glassed’ with bamboo cloth and epoxy (equivalent of one layer of 4 oz cloth each side).
I don’t want to build her a long-board, because I’d like her to be able to duck-dive, and tear it up some, which she isn’t far off doing. I don’t really plan to build this as a ‘training only’ board either. It’s ideally going to be her usual ride for some time to come.
Nose rocker is a bit of a delicate balance, as a low rocker will help with paddling speed, but she tends to pearl my 8’ low-nose-rocker fun board (as do most of us)
When I travelled all the way from Australia to Canada, I borrowed a local friend’s board to surf at Tofino. Ironically, the board had come all the way from Aus too. It was a stable yet nicely maneouverable 6’8" thruster, with a very subtle swallow tail.
Unfortunately, the only photos I took had too much perspective to be able to trace outlines/profiles from. I did a bit of photoshop trickery and made a passable outline.
By the time I’d drawn this, it looked eerily like the Channel Islands inspired 6’9" boards that some other folks have been carving in cedar.
More for style than anything else, I’ve filled in the swallow tail (making it full and round), and extended it to 6’9" in the process.
The volume is a lot lower than those chanell islands boards too. I like it this way.
Here are the BRD file and a PDF of the templates. Feel free to use them is you like. I may do some further tweaking before I post them in the template library.
http://www.mediafire.com/?wbwsecwlnzg
http://www.mediafire.com/?inmz8y0arxz
I welcome any comments, but most particularly, I’d like to know people’s thoughts on:
Fins: I was originally going to build it as a thruster, but am now contemplating a single. Probably more for sheer style than anything. This is my first dabble with concaves. Again, not sure if I’ll do glass-ons, or removable. That’s more a question of practicality, but I’m open to people’s thoughts.
I’ve got a single giving way to double concaves through the tail. I don’t really know if these are on the money, ridiculous, etc.
Wide point: I’ve placed the wide point just fore of center. I know you tend to steer a board off the rear or fore foot depeding on the position of the widepoint (Thus, pivot point, I presume?). What other effect will it have? I presume more drag with a rearward widepoint?
PS—don’t tell Kimmy! Top secret.
