I’m planning on building my first ever surfboard and I’d like to use it for foiling. I’ve seen very little discussions or videos on how to place a foil on a custom surfboard, so I’d like to see if anyone with any experience can help me out. I did see this one video where the guy cuts two long holes out in the foam and places denser foam inside to strengthen where the hydrofoil will be placed. The only issue is, I don’t know where to go from there, especially since the hydrofoil I will be buying is put in place with a plate with 4 screws (its from cleawaterfoils.com). He does talk about placing “carbon” on the top and bottom, which I’m assuming he’s referring to carbon patches, but all the surfboards i’ve seen with carbon patches are done on the sides. Any tips are welcome. thank you!!
You’ll probably get some more traction for the discussion if you talk about the surfboard design versus the foil attachment.
Ironically enough, once you are ‘flying’ the surfboard design becomes almost irrelavant.
The last I paid attention to foils (have one half done from two years ago), stuff like the Ride Engine insert and others similar from the video were considered decent systems.
The Clearwater crew seems to do mostly wake-foil on non-buoyant boards.
The surfboard goes from evenly loaded on the botton to a concentrated load with a lever arm while flying.
Stiffer deck and bottom, and some way to tie the deck to bottom near the foil mounting points. Mini-stringers?
Carbon rails won’t do much for a foil mount.
I am familiar with a couple guys from here are more involved with that klind stuff commercially
reinforce how ever you want. I used High density foam and wood fiberglass . Use two longboard boxes for adjustablity. I went through stringer side to side for reinforcements but not necessary for your boards. You may not even have a stringer on your foam. If you have a stringer you can reinforce on either side of stringer. Many ways to reinforce here is mine for a 7 footish SUp, you can prone paddle and foil surf this also. pic of stacked reinforse with fiberglass patch(10oz) and in vac bag
nose blocks, tail blocks, Preglass center fins for standard foil plate, 3 1/4 " centerd I think, I have a template made for marking. fiber glass like reguar board. Hope this helps. Use your imagination, vac bagging not a neccesity. Check out a guy called “onofoils” on the interweb, he has some pics of his style of boards for prone foil surfing only
Hi TFB, for foam boards I use a threaded rod resined through the board to hold a 200mm square baseplate.
6 x 5mm rods. I rode over 100 different foils using FCS plugs which never failed until using the threaded rod which is cheaper.
The mast is only 300mm so the dynamic forces are a lot less than on a 700mm mast, a shorter mast also allows for quicker transitions between planing and foiling. A shorter mast makes a more intimate connection between the riders feet and the foils response.
Mount it between your feet usually where the flattest part of the rocker is. Works a charm on boards with concave.
