New Kid with a stupid rail question.

General Discussion
1

This may be a stupid question for you guys but I read a bunch of post and cant figure it out.

I just finish a board that turned out good .My first. I just followed the J.C shaping 101 and walla!

Now Im doing a fish and I don’t want a domed deck with the double rail bands .I want a flat deck. The blank is a flat deck.

After the tucked under bottom of the rail do I just round the top off with sand paper? Or do I need to take It down some with like a single rail band? If so How?

I want the board about 6’7 and close to 3" thick. You guy’s rock!

2

What kind of volume do you want your rails to have? Full and boxy? Sloped? Down?..

Decide that, then cut two narrow rail bands that fit the bill. All you’ll be dowing it tightening up the bands to make the curve of the rail start closer to the rail instead of more on the deck.

But you still need to decide the rail profile, so sketch out a few ideas and draw some planes. Do it to scale so you can see/measure what you need to do.

3

Its for the small mushy days so I think full and boxy would be better, do you?

4

Fuller rails certainly add more volume, but with that added rail volume it gets harder to bury one in a turn. I’ve also found that too much rail volume, especially in the nose area, keeps you from getting the edge set on late takeoffs.

That being said, since you have a flat deck, and you’ve got plenty of volume there (approaching the 3 inch mark) it’s ok to shave some volume off along the rails. A gently curved outer third into a fullish medium rail would be fine… sort of a fattish “modern rail” profile.

If I can come up with a good drawing, I’ll post one…

A flat-decked fish, 6’7" and three inches thick is a lot of foam. I think you’ll want to add some sensitivity to the rails.

5

Cool, Thanks, Yea a drawing if you have one I think will help me alot.

6

I don’t know how much you tucked the bottom of the rail, but try to sketch this out on graph paper…

Meaure up from the bottom about 1.25" and out on the deck 1.75" for your first band. Go from the middle of that band out to 3.5" for your second band. Then go from the middle of that band out to about 5.5" for your last band. Blend them all in and you should have a fuller medium rail profile.

If you tucked your rail under pretty far, start higher up from the bottom than 1.25"… maybe 1.5"

Sketch it out and see how it looks.

7

Thanks for the help and thanks for the mesurements to try out. COOL!!!