Making side runners for a bonzer is a laborious job, and the only choice i have as to have them shipped from america to the uk will cost me about £100 per set of fins. i was thinking about making a plug and casting my own fins… i figured that as they dont need to flex much i could use a mix of lam resin and chopped starnds. what do ya all think of the plan?
just get some lokboxes they are available in the uk: call mick at classic surf number is on the lokbox webpage
The simplest way to make these runners is just to lay-up 6-8 layers of 6oz and cut them out with
a little tab on the base, clean 'em up, then route a tiny slot in the bottom and hot-glue (or resin)
them into the slot. They did it like this for years on ‘‘real’’ bonzers out of California factories. If the
base is long and the runner not too deep, it works just fine. Make sure everything is sealed if you do
this.
yea, i tried lokbox, too expensive. also, its not the glassing on that is the problem, its the cutting and foilng of the fins. its a royal pain in the arse!
There really isn’t any foil to the runners I described, just rounding the edges. Cutting them out
isn’t hard either, just a jigsaw and a fine-tooth blade. A band-saw would make it super-easy.
They did the route-and-glue install so the board could be polished w/o the runners and then do
the install as the last step before the board goes out the door.
Hi Mike you might be talking about Eaton Zingers. I don’t know of any shops that did Campbell bros. boards that way. The routing the little hole/hotglue thing always leaked. And the fins do have a foil it’s just hard to see due the small size of the runners. The ones that Moonlight glassing has used for as far back as I can remember were made by a guy named Jack Jensen (The fin man) and they have no tabs to be inserted into the board. The bottom of the fin is flat and they are glassed on that way. Sanded that way, and polished that way. The simplest way is to learn how to make them, glass them on cleanly, sand them properly, and polish them without rub throughs. There’s a reason why Malcolms boards have gone almost exclusively to Moonlight or Watermans Guild. They stepped up and figured out how to do them properly. For those that don’t want to go through that learning process…there’s the Lokbox version that makes it so just about any shop can put out a bonzer. But you’ll pay more for 4 boxes and 4 box fins.