Any of you who have attended the Board Room shows in San Diego will be familiar with Dane and his impecible work. This is from Dane’s website and provides a little insight into his background, acomplishments and offerings.
"VULCAN Surfboards is the inspiration of surfer, shaper, author, 3rd generation artist and California native Dane Hantz. Drawing upon his history in working with the most highly acclaimed shapers in the industry from Takayama, …Lost, Al Merrick, Gary Linden, Allen, tomo, Hynson and many other fine craftsman both large scale and exclusive Dane has refined his experience into VULCAN.
VULCAN is an amalgam of engineering principles, fundamental designs, & obsessive attention to detail. There’s a reason why our boards have won Best High Performance Shortboard Design for both 2013 and 2014 at the Boardroom International and are currently on display at two museums, the California Surf Museum and the Surfing Heritage Foundation. VULCAN has been featured in SURFER Magazine, reviewed by the Inertia and tested by Comparesurf.com to great acclaim."
So remember Dane is our guest on this thread (you can beat him up later when he drops in on other threads, ha?), and remember the “RULE”: You ask the questions and Dane alone answers them. I’ll also mention that like many others on the vangard of the buisness, Dane has some pretty cool tech going. No one is obligated to divulge anything they don’t want to divulge. Unlike most of us, Dane and other Pro’s make a living at this and keep an edge is crucial.
Dane, can’t help myself. I get the first question. I very much like your convex tech. The last 4 or 5 boards I’ve built have been stringerless with rail channels but not the convex as you do. Are yours hand shaped or machine? I do mine by hand with a wood dowel and some 80 grit wrapped.
I recently had one come back buckled. I didn’t see it happen and can’t be sure of the circumstances, but it has put a little doubt in my mind. I think I need to tweak my approach. Any thoughts to share?
Morning guys, thanks for having me. It’s Monday so I’m currently re-animating, but no less interested to see where this goes and what we discover, thanks. Dane
Thanks for your question. First off as we all know boards break, I once broke a new stringered board in less than fifteeen minutes on a backhand barrel gone awry… that’s the breaks! As my Dad used to always say, if your not breaking something, your not trying hard enough.
Since we don’t know the circumstances of the buckle and assuming that this is an eps blank = < 2# density, epoxy and that the user didn’t bail their board here’s some things I would consider:
Do you have a healthy lap? If it’s a freelap, is it of uniform margin?
Any burn throughs at the rail?
Do you have any deck patches, carbon, vectornet or any other weave or composite that has a hard angular line perpindicular to the length of your board?
Did you have unidirectional? Was it placed on the deck?
Was the board post cured?
I’m sure you know all these trouble spots but I want to be sure of the basics. As board builders, I believe we should focus on performance above all else with an understanding that no board is indestructible. With this in mind, I believe that a stringerless boards strength and durability should be on par with a stringered board. The stringerless balance between strength, weight, recoil and flex is something I grappled with until I developed the Convex construction.
Initially I shaped all of my channels by hand, later on I designed the tooling and the technique to perform what I call the compound cut via CNC. I worked with the very talented Thomas Vilmin of Shape 3D to perfect this method which ultimately led to a new level of complex millwork previously unknown to the industry.
That was a 5’0" Slugbug I built for Ron Schein of Boardporn. Shown here with a carbon twill wrapped rail. Ron owns about every board under the sun, from every shaper. He said the Slugbug is the fastest board in his quiver. I’m stoked on that.
What are the other dims on that slugbug? I’m a fan of stubby, short and wide boards in most conditions and yours look awesome.
That being said, what’s your take on what makes these sorts of boards work? What’s that one thing, aside from the fact that everything adds up to the whole so you need a combo of good design elements.
Rons dims were 5’ x 20.5 x 2.43 right around 30 Liters.
Theres 3 main contributing factors that make the board function. low rocker, wide planing area and deep concave beginning at the nose. Of course theres more to the story, but these are the important major elements.
like yourself, I’m also a fan of these designs in average local conditions, where I’ll typically surf a 5’4 or a 5’5 in knee high to head high waves. They’re easy and fun to surf. I can rip or I can flow depending on my mood. However In hollow surf or chunky seas I won’t use them because personally I feel theres better designs.
Sure, assuming natural level for the design all the hulls are in the mid two’s and most of my shortboard outlines are in the mid threes. From the nose back however my rockers are fairly unique in terms of curve and placement of the apex in relation to the length of the board. So much so I have a hard time with most poly blanks.
I checked some of the designs shown in online videos. Was wondering if you might share approx. tail width ranges (@ 12" up from the end) - seems like several guys have busted the envelope wide open on that one dimension. I asked The Firewire guy (as in 17"-19"?) but got no answer on that question.
All other stuff aside, I have a feeling that tail width is a big factor in small wave performance designs. What you say?
~~Just a note, this site doesnt present well on mobile, the ‘point’ button obscures the ‘reply’ button. if your getting points added or deducted from me it’s accidental.
