Basically this idea started when a friend wanted a board that would fit in the trunk of his new car. There’s about 5ft of trunk space when you fold the seats down. We then made it 23" wide and 3" thick to give it enough volume to float him. He’s about 150 lbs (160 in a winter suit) and 5’11". Then he decided to go crazy, add a concave deck, bonzer concaves on the bottom with about 1/2" - 1" of vee, and a thumb tail with wings (kind of like the Rusty Toad, but more round). Once I saw the bonzer concaves I decided this needed to have bonzer fins instead of the quad I was going to make when it originally had single-double-vee bottom contours.
He spent an hour in class today designing it (to scale I might add, silly engineers), and his sketch has the 23" wide point at 6" forward, a 19 1/2" nose, 18" tail, wings are about 3" from the tail and a 6" pod at the end. It has about 3" of nose rocker with a little bit of flip and a beak nose, and 1 1/2" of tail rocker.
So how feasible is this? It’s only going to cost about $40 to make it (HD foam, leftover glass and RR resin) not including fins, so we’re pretty set on trying it out.
Also, how are bonzer fins foiled? I’ve never actually seen any of them in person, and we’d like to not have to spend more money on fins.
I played around with AKU shaper and drew this up based on the sketch he gave me. The rails aren’t exactly to scale, but they give you an idea of the concaves on this thing.
I can’t get it to save as a pdf for some reason, but I’ll keep trying.
rachel PM me your email adress. I have a fish of similar dimensions. pull the tail in. That is way to wide the thing doesn’t want to bottom turn. Also if you can squeez an extra 2 inches of length in you can get a nice outline, that thing has such a straight rail line it is really going to be doing super drawn out turns. Bonzer fins fin a template online, and stick it on graph paper. a thrid of the way back from the leading edge make the foil it’s thickest. You just make sure everything blends nice and smooth.
I would totally bet that if you blow it up to 7 foot, you’ll find some slices at the nose and tail that fall off when you shrink it to 5, and that’s breaking the PDF conversion
happened to me a lot until I think Jimmy figured it out or I did
The synthesis is :
the rail needs to be fairly straight and the right length or drive will be lost–WP is about 5 north of WP so the nose isn’t as ridiculous as it could be, but the wheelbase from WP back to the wing points is about what a trad fish has, around 3 feet, and the rocker is similar to a fast fish–it could be even more skatey if the wheelbase was even shorter,
you can do very minimally-toed, double foiled keels at 75 percent the area of what they would normally be, although maybe slightly thicker, and further back (see Casper and Simfish) and still keep the rail in, whereas you’d have to blow up the center fin on a Bonzer fin setup to keep it in the water
Bonzer concaves will slow the board down in the surf that board will work in.
I would think about concaving the wings a bit.
All that vee will be unnecessary if you use rail fins that are smaller, but use just a bit of belly
Oh and I made it an S deck because I like them and to reduce the volume in the crazy wide nose for ducking
The only real concrete thing about this board is that it can’t be longer than 5ft. It’s all part of the challenge.
When I set the length measurement it had be delete a couple slices at the nose to even make it 5ft. So I don’t think that’s what’s screwing up the conversion.
He’s 5’11" and weighs about 150 lbs, probably 160 in a winter suit.
What is the ideal surf for this board? Because we figured steep, fast beachbreak would be best. Fortunately we do have points and reefs here, but they are much less steep and fast.
He was pretty set on the bonzer concaves. This whole thing is just one big untested concept, which is fine by him. Would there be a point to keeping the winged tail if using twin keels? And is there still a center fin? Belly instead of vee in the tail is fine by me. Otherwise the board is pretty flat I’m guessing? When he first talked to me about the design I suggested an S-deck to deal with the thickness. Would keeping more volume in the tail have other positive qualities besides duck-diving?
Gave it another shot–got the conversion from your file, but changed so many things I don’t know what did it
I keep thinking the tail will be wanting to come up quicker.
I was thinking the board would be for smaller stuff, a long mushy wall here and there, if you had points, all the better.
Have you seen that Hydrodynamica trailer, with Casper? The fins are making a crazy wide short board work by being further back to the corners and they let it bank by being smaller and double foiled–that’s what I’m thinkin
My wings keep the rail line and rive at the corners. The concave just inside them would give them some more traction. There’s a Steve Lis thing to that. I can’t rem. if MR did it too.
I’m thinking the 7" center fin won’t be in the water much, so why not just go with the smaller keels on the rail.
g
PS: I just realized if you had a full Bonzer concave treatment, you could probably just leave the fins off. See what he says.
I think my version of AKU might have a glitch or two and that’s what’s screwing up the conversion.
Either way, I took off about an inch at the wide point and redrew the wings. He’s very set on the ones he drew. The wings are only 3" from the back, and I’d be fine with setting the fins right on the wings with very little toe and cant.
Also he’s a little scared of finless. He suggested wakeboard fins, which are pretty much tiny keels. Would these work with the bonzer concaves?
I’m on version 2.0 of “Sue” right now. I’m liking the Halcyon “mental” fin in it better than the TA CA. I’ve ridden that board in DOH surf, and it handled. Just plug a bigger fin it. Surprisingly versatile. The next one I do will be out of EPS and I want to take it down to 5’10" or so. I’m over 200 pounds.
He’s 5’11" and weighs 150lbs, a decent surfer who transitions from different boards very well. I usually throw him something new every month to play around with because of it. His home break can be a massive powerful wave on big days and then a slow long-walled beach break on the small days. But we surf pretty much everywhere in the state which can range from point breaks to mellow peeling rock reefs. He thought the board would really only work well in steep beachbreak, which means there’s about 2-3 places he can ride this.
His answer to why he likes the “wings” and bonzer concave: The bonzer is hybrid between vee and double concave and I see it causing somewhat easier turning and good bite from the rails when in the wave. The wings are to give a narrower contact patch when fully up on a plane, to allow for more speed though i’m not sure how relevant that is on a surfboard. If nothing else it gives a little bit of tail that’ll stay nice & wet. Wings give a wider planing surface to get started on and a narrower faster tail once going.
Also he’s stubborn. He won’t even let me change it too much.
Shoot, if youre only spending 40 bucks, go for it, whatever he says–I’m pretty sure it doesn’t need to be anything like 22-23 inches wide for someone only 150 pounds though. Where are the pics from all these other experiments though?
I took it down to 22". It was tough enough trying to get him to compromise on that.
We haven’t done too many crazy experiments yet. He still hasn’t found a cheap board to add hydrofoils to. But if this thing works then we might be making more. And if it fails then we’ll definitely be making more. Either way there will be loads of pictures.
We’re sticking to the basic original design, but we’d like some help with fins. I’m thinking either bonzer runners and a smaller center fin, or a thruster setup. We’re not really sure how well quad fins would work with such a weird design, but we’re up for trying anything.
If anyone has any ideas, throw 'em out there, because we’re pretty lost in regard to fins.
A buddy of mine just dropped off these two boards as inspiration for shaping a board for him. They’re both kneeboards by design, but he surfs them standing.
Anyway, just though I’d post some pictures on this thread since it was about a stubbie. Both are from the 80’s, or so I’m told. One has a rather interesting choice of fin. Enjoy!
