Finished shaping but because its potystyrene Im not glassing it but seeing how the shape works and then altering it to refine what shape gives the best results. I understand that if I keep altering it I will eventually make it worse.
I rode it today on a few dozen peaky clean waves at Manly. Its too bouyant, the polystyrene sits way high which is good in some respects but makes duck diving a hassle.
So the first rule, volume and material selection is important because some foams are more bouyant than others.
Id post a pic here but the button to do that has disappeared.
The channels definately helped hold the board from sliding down the wave when I was going acrss the wave , but they dont hold or drive like fins do.
Second rule, channels add hold but they cant compete with fins, unless the channels have deep skeggy Cadillac fin-like sides, but thats just copying fins and calling it something else.
I put an extra in of nose rocker into the board but after riding it I found I had to move forward to ‘rock’ the board into its fastest angle, in other words to align the ‘average’ angle of the hull into the fastest angle.
Third rule, better off with flatter rocker forward and then flip the nose, or use a longer flatter rocker throughout.
The rails I left SQUARE, flat sided blocks, see pics above, just to see what the effect was.
The block rails did catch but only when I moved forward and rolled the outside rail down towards the face. Riding from the tail or middle, turning with the board up on a rail it was fine. Only when I moved forward and kept the board flat did the front rail grab, and being square it grabs BIG time but the effect of a square front rail is not continiously apparent as I would have previously thought !
But the rest of the time it was impossible to tell that the rails were any different to any other board.
Forth rule, rounded rails are only essential in the front half of the board to give a bit of leeway to prevent catching. The general soft rounded shape of rails is done because it provides no sharp corners and is a logical way to connect the deck and hull planes. So I’ll put rounded rails or boat rails on the front but I see no reason to surround every board with them if there are other options to test and try.
SO Im going to take out a bit of bulk, flatten out the nose rocker and round the front rails. And if I can post pics I will, whatever happened to the upload/post pic buttons on the editor ?
Regards, Brett.
