A friend at work just gave me a beat up 9’6" longboard trifin. I have a board this size so I was thinking about stripping it and shaping a shorter board out of the blank. This will be my first shaping attempt. I have always wanted to but decided to build a boat first. The boat is about done so available time is near.
What shape can I make out of this board? Can I get a fish or early 70’s era short single fin out of it?
SF
To usefully strip and reshape you have to start with a lot of foam, and rocker close to what you want to have on the reshaped board. Most trifin longboards won’t have enough thickness, and the rocker will be wrong for most short boards. The 70s shorty is out, I think, due to the probable absence of sufficient thickness and rocker; but a somewhat thin fish or similar can be done, depending on your idea of adequate thickness for it.
That said, I recently made a 7’0" trifin from a 9-foot something windsurfing hull. Of course, the hull had lotsa thickness, and I was fully prepared to walk the whole thing to the garbage can if at any time during shaping it appeared that it had gone too far.
…surffish, is really better to sell the board and with the money buy one blank or may be two!
…anyway, you should take some measures until do something…
…in this case, the most important are the max width and the max wide…remember that when you strip the glass you lose may be 1/4´´ max, (depend the dings or dents)…
Thanks for the input. I’ll measure the thickness to see what I have to work with.
SF