I am an Indian surfer. It happend a tourist left a foamboard on the beach I want to use. But there were no fins…since I can not get a set of future fins in India and my raw materials are very limited, I came to the idea to make my own fins out of an ordinary vegetable cutting board, the kind you get out of plastic. Just cut it out and sand it 
Hey Cocopelli, that’s a great find. Your idea with the chopping board sounds a good start - They may be a little flexible but should work. I would try keeping the foil thicker than ususal to combat the flex. However, if you can get hold of some resin and fibre glass cloth, or even thin silk you could make your own from wood, plywood offcuts are a good starting point. There’s loads of advice on making your own fins in the forums - just do a search.
Good luck with your project and try to post a picture of the end result!
Cheers
Rich
www.thirdshade.com
Ben's gonna want a ride report!
Good thinking to find something suitable thats alternate.
Ive made a set of thruster side fins out of 10 mm cutting board, under pressure they flexed from tip to base and provided no resistance thru any hard turn. They lasted about 5 waves and snapped off at the base.
I think the plastic is a polyethylene so that the food doesnt stick but it also means resin wont stick either.
But give it a try anyway or modify them to make them stronger somehow.
cow dung fins
that's what I want to see ...
sorry , couldn't resist ...
I hope that comment doesn't incense you , coco ....
welcome to swaylocks , mate !
I think you are the first surfer from india we have had here ...
you must be a real ...um...goa , eh !
Absolutely, it works. I once cut down a 1" thick cutting board (25mm, more or less) to make a a copy of a broken Lexan Fins Unlimited fin which was something you couldn’t obtain otherwise. Very similar to the ‘nylon filled’ High Density Polyethylene fins that were made for the things in the first place.
Though I did learn that, as the High Density Polyethylene ( HDPE) plastic is in fact a thermoplastic, using power tools at high speed melts it and it hardens behind the cut, which is a bother. Hand tools like saws, rasps and files work very well indeed. Routers, on the other hand, leave a very strange HDPE ‘froth’ on the surface of the work.
It makes a pretty rugged fin. The one I made, that was put on a Farrelly Stringerless, well, it was surfed about 100mm into the rail of a lifeguard paddleboard with no damage to the fin or the Farrelly - still going as far as I know, some twenty years later.
Best Regards
doc…
It seems to me that plywood would work better. Even better if you can get a varnish or liquid plastic coating on them. Maybe reinforce it with fiberglass packing tape.
Goa,… took me a sec to get it, you funny bastard !!!