1st: not a troll (at least not on purpose) – I lost my log-in info for “batfische” account…
2nd: I’m thinking about how to make changes for my next finless board, and am wondering in particular how I might change the second to make it a little less tracky and how eliminating the tail “points” (more like “hooks”) might change its hold and feel.
The first finless board I made was 6-3 (from the tail point), about 23 wide, about 2.88" thick (I’m was 210 lbs or so when I made this board - pic attached below, the white board with the asym tail). The channels are roughly on traditional quad-fin lines, with what would be 1/4" toe if the board had a 4.5 fin in the front, and a bit less than that if it had rears. It has wings on both sides, and the tail point being on the heel side (for regular foot rider, which I am) was a humorous brain fart result of being in the bay a long, long time; once I did it, I kind of figured it wasn’t the end of the world – at a minimum it’d be interesting to find out how it felt to ride, with the (Lovelace Rabbit’s Foot-inspired) asym tail cut backward. Rocker was kind of a compromise between the inherent rocker in a Millenium fish blank and a relatively flat shortboard-hybrid rocker that I like, and that’s been successful for me on many different boards. The rails are 60/40, more or less traditional short board rails with a speed bead extending up to something like 16" from the longer tail point, slightly longer on one side than the other (can’t remember which, right now – a buddy has the board – but it was due to & done according a comment I read of Derek Hynd’s about how the speed edges should be asym on a finless).
- Ride results: excellent wave catching and good entry, very tracky on the heel side -- as soon as the board is flat, it wants to hook hard left (I blame drag, created by the tail point & bottom contour along the point). Down the line drive & hold (on rights) were fun but awkward, with the board going fast, tending to want to ride on roughly a 45 degree angle across the wave face, nose pointing up. Speed is very good. I'm only an intermediate, skillwise, maybe intermediate-advanced, and for me this board was a severe challenge to control, less so than normal boards I've ridden without fins, but more so than the 2nd finless (blue/maroon, attached below). It was also ridden by a few more skilled riders, both of whom were able to control the board much better than me, and one of whom -- advanced, expert shortboarder, e.g. big, beautiful carving turns in big, good waves, capable of airs in small waves, etc. -- has been surfing the board a lot and is able to drive it down the line (on rights) very fast with control, as well as to do comfortable 360s as well as a clean, predictable kick-180 (pivoting on the inside, toe side rail) as a normal part of the ride when the board tail slides out on rights. I did also find that when I was riding the board, the points of the squared off nose seemed to come into play, and that initiating turns or trying to engage a rail seemed apt to be affected (plowing feeling, and possibility of perling) by the nose.
For the second board, I wanted to get rid of the feeling of the board wanting to hook to one side when flat, to eliminate the feeling that the nose was coming into play, and to get it to drive down the line with the nose inherently wanting to point more straight down the line (rather than nose up, tail down). For those reasons I changed the channel design (other than the channels on the rail, the long channels are parallel to the stringer – no toe – and I added a kind of shallow center fin on the stringer), made two shorter points (symmetrical), changed the overall planshape to be even more like a wakeboard (I actually blew up a wakeboard in shape3d to plan out the board, and then changed it to suit my eye when drawing out the planshape), and pulled the nose in more, rounding it off more as well, but keeping the squashed nose idea. Instead of the rocker from the 1st finless, I pulled the rocker from a CI retro single fin, because it was even flatter than the finless board’s original rocker, and I liked the single fin I took it from’s speed. I think I may have flattened the rocker out a bit more in the tail than on the original single fin. I also removed the wings, thinking they may have been playing a role in the 1st finless wanting to trim at an angle instead of straight down the line (for me – again, when my more advanced bud rides it, even though 30 lbs lighter than me, he is able to make an adjustment to get it to drive more straight down the line). I also, not intentionally, dropped the volume probably 10%, with the board coming in at 5-10 x 22.5 x 2.75.
- Results: much better control for me than the 1st finless, and much easier to set a line when initially getting in and standing up. There is still a tendency for the board to want to hook hard to either side when weighted to that side, but it's much more controllable, and is symmetrical (i.e. it pulls/wants-to-track equally on both sides). The glide is actually less satisfying than the original board, and although it seems much more sensitive to rider control and weighting -- it responds to changes in footing more predictably, although also seemingly more readily -- it also feels like it has a lot of hitches (hard to describe) in how it rides. My more advanced bud who surfs & loves the 1st finless says it feels like a wakeboard; I've never ridden a wakeboard, so I wouldn't know, but of course that makes sense since the planshape is roughly lifted from a wakeboard. On the whole, the board's largely a success to me, as it gets in well, makes small/crappy waves a fun challenge, and for me worth riding, whereas normally they wouldn't be for any of my shortboards -- a fun alternative to longboarding that extends my options for crowded and/or poor-wave-quality days. One random note: introducing a point on the toe side seemed to get in the way of the 180 kick that my more advanced bud has wired on the 1st finless; maybe the point is catching when he goes to kick it? Dunno.
I’ve been wondering, though, what would likely happen if I eliminated the tail points, or reduced them to something like a mild moon tail, or even went the other way (diamond tail?), while keeping the channel design. Is it more likely, for example, that the trackiness I’m feeling (the board wanting to follow a fairly consistent/insistent line when initially weighting the board to one side or the other when in trim) is due to the channels or to the tail shape?
For what it’s worth, I don’t claim to know that any of my ideas about how things are working, or why, are accurate. All I know is that the changes I made seemed to do, for the most part, what I wanted them to do. One thing overall, the second board doesn’t feel as good to ride – it trims easier, and seems to cut a cleaner line, but the glide just doesn’t feel good for some reason (again, hard to describe).
[EDIT: not sure why, but I can’t reply to posts the normal way – the reply button doesn’t even show up in my browser. sk8ment: I actually saw Wissing’s boards & vids before making board #2! His boards with the deep conical channels along the stringer (creating even more of a kind of center fin) were the inspiration for my milder channels along the stringer. It looked to me in the vids like his boards with that center “fin” were slowed significantly, almost like fins would slow the board down – not quite as much, but signficantly (it looked like in the vids) – so I went with a lesser version of what seemed the same idea. One general comment I’d add after surfing the 2nd board more is that the added channels (8, compared to 4 channels in my 1st finless) do seem to confirm what was covered in some earlier threads, i.e. that unless an edge/rail is engaged the channels prevent the board from “sticking” rather than helping it to stick to the wave and go on rail from being flat. It really feels like the tail points are what create the board’s hold, meaning it feels under the feet like that’s what’s happening – kind of a bummer since the points seem to get in the way of the board feeling smooth when transitioning between being flat & on rail, and from drawing one line to another (it feels instead like the board has particular directions it wants to go and instead of smoothly transitioning between them it kind of wants to “click” between them). Re Wissing again, though, I was kind of thinking something like this might be more the answer (for me):
I guess it doesn’t bode well that apparently that’s an early finless for Wissing, and he’s now doing the much more complicated bottoms and seems to be sticking to them. At least for me, if I was going to try and go that far, I might as well make a traditional board with fins, given (what looks like in the vids) the reduced speed and overall surfing that is no longer so much finless style (like Hynd, or Burch) but more like a very slidey shortboarding style.]
