My niece is 16 and 5’8" tall, thin. I want to make her a learner board that she can carry, store, transport etc to her local mush.
I wanted it to allow her to paddle it, get a decent wave count, learn to turn from the back off the hip and fin, walk, trim up and down, and noseride.
Drew the thing myself, but does it make sense? The narrower nose with the hip lets her trim up and get the forward rail into the face while turning the fin inward and stabilizing that attitude, right?
Don’t know about the rocker, and didn’t mess with the bottom at all.
In EPS
You sure you don’t want to put her on something longer? If you want her to learn to walk around on it, and have an easy time paddling it out… I might go 8’6" or more. Heck, she’s taller than I am!
I’m eventually going to order or try shaping my fiance’s first board, and I’ve had her on my 7’4" egg… She couldn’t paddle that thing to save her life. Had a much easier time on my 9’2". She couldn’t carry that one, but it’s glassed very, very, heavily and it’s thicker than she needed. I’ll likely look for something 8’6"-8’10", 22" wide with pretty natural rocker… maybe kicked a bit in the nose. That was the one good thing about that egg she tried… the rocker is flat until it kicks pretty quickly 10-12" from the nose. Really hard to perl that thing.
Your nose rocker looks shallow to me (but keep in mind my level of surfboard design ignorance… very high). That said, overdoing it leads to learning really bad habits… that happened to me with my high-rocker ‘beginner’ board.
I agree with famousactress. I reckon the trick here is to keep a bit of length so it’s a long board,(8’6" sounds good), but keep the thickness right down, (21/8"-21/4"), the board will still have plenty of volume for a skinny teenager to be all over the waves and it will be light- as long as you glass it light. Do put a little more lift in the nose to make taking off easier for a learner.
hate to jump on the bandwagon…but i agree. take a look at some cool chick boards – Bing Ashley Lloyd Signature Model, Channin Siren, etc. let those boards inspire you to draw up the perfect shape.