Just thought I’d post back to let Mr. J, and any others who were following this thread, know that I finished the Pink XPS project and have had it in the water as well. A 7’6" X 13" X 21"X 13" x 2-3/4" rounded pin, epoxy laminated (Resin Research), stringerless, 2+1 set-up was surfed for the first time this weekend at a spot in Long Beach LI. I’m pleased to report that it surfs well. Picks up waves easily (FYI, I’m 6’2", about 215 lbs, surfing 20+ years), is responsive in turns, Doesn’t feel stiff or ‘tracky’ my complaints… 1) that it feels a bit corky. In retrospect I wish I had foiled the tail thinner, I had left some thickness in there thinking it would help me catch waves easier. It may do that, but the overall feeling when riding is that of a board with more float than I’d expected. 2) that it has a too much rocker in the tail. I had figured that the foam would spring back some, and flatten out, after I glued the rocker in - wrong - it held up perfectly and I have a fairly extreme, by east coast standards, rocker profile through the tail. I don’t have that measurement but it is probably 3.5"/+. I put in about a 3/8" concave though out the mid section of the bottom, which helps flatten it out a bit through the middle, but the thickness and rocker in the tail are pretty extreme for the usual condition around here. Otherwise I’m pleased with the results. I ended up painting the foam with tempura paints mixed with acrylic floor sealer (Future - Thanks Herb). Greg Loehr’s Resin Research Epoxy was excellent to work with. No smell to speak of and the board is light and feels strong with a 2x6 oz deck and bottom. I have a 1’ Carbon Fiber strip laminated under the deck glass - running were the stringer would be. I cannot tell what this add’s, if anything, to the strength or stiffness… but saying that it has CF in it at least sounds pretty good…! Sanded finish. I took a few pics that I’ll post but need to get them developed and scanned, so that will take a week or two. Thanks to Mr. Paler and all here again for this forum and all the helpful info posted here. Next up a 10’1"Y - I need to build a longboard. Eric J -------------------------------- Original post… Pink XPS report Eric J – Monday, 7 July 2003, at 10:16 a.m. Took my two panels (2" thick and 1" thick) of dow/corning pink xps foam out and set up a caveman style glue press to glue in some rocker. A flat bench with a 5" pile of 2x4’s at one end (nose) and a 3" pile at the other. Spread out a lot of Elmers on the panels and weighted the foam down with everything heavy I could find - cinderblocks, bags of cement, heavy power tools, cans of paint, scrap lumber. Left it alone from Friday PM to Sunday PM. Took off the weights and had a stringerless, rockered, pink, 3" x 24" x 8’ rectangular blank. I spent at least an hour milling from the bottom to achive some foil in the nose (and tail) and take about 1/2" out of the over-all thickness. I templated a 7’6" x 13" x 21" x 13" rounded pin with the wide point 3" back. and cut it out. So far, so good. Then I spent about another hour working on the deck and top of the rails. Noted that at places along the rail, where the glue seam is, there is still some squeeze-out of un-cured Elmers (though there must be enough that dried since the rocker is holding up fine). Note to self… Maybe use epoxy for the glue-up if there is a next time. I need to finish off the bottom and rails and final blend/sand the whole thing. Pink xps shapes well. It does not plane as fine as the poly clark blanks I’ve worked on but it sands out smooth enough. To work on a non-foiled blank is very time-consuming. Then again this blank would cost about $20 - including the glue - if you bought the foam at Home Depot. For the bottom - I’m thinking a little belly in the first 1/3, into a flat or light concave in the middle, into a light V in the tail. Tucked under edges in the rear 1/3, the rest soft. Single fin - long FU box (maybe Future boxes for side-bites or an optional Tri set-up. attempting to give myself alot of options w/fins). how’s that sound? Eric J
Hello Eric, I have been watching the pink xps thread for sign of activity so thanks for posting the result. I just had a look at the Clark blank catalog and the 7’ 7" R has 2 5/8" rocker as a comparison. Ahem, I think I did bring up the subject of spring back which turned out to be a red-herring. Hurricane Fabian is heading in your direction so maybe the tail rocker will come in useful. Regarding that and your tail thickness at least you now have a first hand experience of how the extreme dimensions worked. Interesting that you can detect the tail float while riding, the tail of my xps project is thick although with a large dome and thinned rails - I assumed its reluctance to be pushed hard into turns was due entirely to the extreme width of my shape (21 3/4"), but maybe it is partly the float. my board was deliberately built extremely wide in an attempt to understand what can control the width. I’ve now given it a fair bit of testing and these are a summary. 6’ 6" 16" nose 21 3/4" width 14 3/4" tail. The rocker follows Clarks 6’ post modern fish measurements stretched out to 6’ 6". Nose rocker 4", tail 2". The board is in the category of fish but has a rounded pin rather than the traditional swallow. It works well and therefore illustrates that a swallow is not needed for this type of board. It also has a narrower tail than the Lis type fishes and fins set at 10 3/4" from tail have been based on my experiences with twinnies from the MR/Martin Potter era. I set the fins a full 2" from the rail believing that it more important to be able to get my heel and toes over the fins to tilt the board into a turn than to follow conventional measurements. It has 1/4" of roll blending into panel V. Although roll is not thought to be a fast bottom shape for shortboards when combined with low rocker a fast board has been produced - this would be no surprise to the longboarders. For anyone just arriving on this thread it has 5 boxes in the tail for testing different configuration. I abandoned the 4 and 2 + trailer configurations in favour of the pure twin and I ride it like that all the time now. However I did pursue the supercharged setup for a while. I would fly along a wave without the supercharger and believe this would be the optimum, then I would put it back in and get another wave with seemingly unbeatable speed. This happened a few times and continued to confuse me. However I was able to draw one absolute conclusion from the supercharger. Although it is a tiny little fin it does have the effect of removing the sideways drift that pure twinnies have during manouvres. Perhaps those that don’t like the drift but want the other characteristics of a twin would find the supercharger useful. I suppose my continued use of it in pure twinnie form is more of an emotional rather than definitive choice. Maybe I am delighted at being able to re-discover the boards that saw me thru the most of the 80’s. As a bit of background information I was born in 1961 in Wales UK and started surfing there age 15 on home made single fins. The discovery of the second generation twin fin opened up a whole new world of small wave shredding to me - I am/was 5’ 7 1/2" and 125lbs and had various home made versions ranging from 5’ 4" to 5’ 11" . I moved to Australia in 1989. This board is however exclusively used in San Francisco beachbreak. I have 3 other tri fins for point break ranging from 6’ 9" to 7’ 10". But it has for the moment at least, completely replaced my 6’ 2" tri fin for small beachbreak. Yes Eric, thats what you need - a homegrown longboard to add to your quiver! I want one of those too
Hey Mr.J, If Fabian does what they say it will… it may kill me, or at least beat the tar out of me! But that might be a good thing… I get my first shot at it either tomorrow evening, or Sat AM - either should be great waves for this area. I do think that the rocker and corky-ness won’t be as much of an issue in better waves. It’ll more likely be a test of strength of my leash-loop than anything. I do like the idea of the pin/twin board you made, and it sounds like a good ride too. Any chance of posting a photo of the board for the archive? I’d like to see it - and I’m sure others who followed the thread would too. (my photos are still at least a week away). With your size I don’t wonder that the twin thing flys. Must be a pleasure to surf. And I’d imagine much looser and quicker than a typical tri-fin. The Longboard is on the wish list. I have a 9’6" now (Bunger) that is a good board, but I’d really like to make a 10’+ with 50/50 rails, and… a similar board with down rails too to compare (I think the Peck Penetrator, and the Wingnut may be like this). The Bunger is a more typical modern LB with up rails in the nose (with some chine and a concave in the nose) to belly and 60/40 rails in mid section, to down/hard rails in the last 1/3. Surfs very smoothly, but not really a noserider, or a cruiser. It is a wonderful board for hogging waves, I need to be really careful to pay attention to what’s happening inside when I’m on it. Not to take everything I can. I may not get to order the LB blanks for a while, since it will cost a small fortune to get them delivered here to NY. This may be a project for when I’m visiting my dad in Florida over Thanksgiving. Hopefully Glue Products in Palm Beach will be open and have some of the right blanks. But I’m using up too much bandwidth with all this. If anything I think we’ve shown that insulation foam is a workable medium for making backyard style boards. If someone wants to experiment, there is more than one way to do so, without the shipping costs of blanks. Best, Eric