Even the President of the United States is not beyond reproach.
I don’t care if Gandi made that ugly template, it is still ugly, but probably works great!
Yes, I bashed Geoff’s and Paul’s templates. You know what? I’ll bet they are looking into it, and by next year, will come out with better, smoother templates.
You keep going on worshipping your Gods, adhereing to the YES MEN mentality, blindly following Jim Jones to Guayana.
Me, I’m an individual, a straight shooter, and will go on calling an ugly duckling…a ugly dunkling!
My old boards sucked also in outline, shape job, and eveness, I’m SURE, but I’m not on trial here, I haven’t made 50,000 boards!!
Looking at a template, or a picture of a board, or an outline, or whatever, on the internet is really not a good way to judge if there are flat spots or whatever else may be termed as imperfections. Most surfboard makers (including Surftech and the recent McCoys) use photoshop or some similar program to create and post “cut-out” image files of the boards. So the imperfection or flat spot you perceive on a board you’re viewing on the internet is just as likely to be an imperfection in the way photoshop was used to trace and cut-out the outline of the board in question. So you’re looking at a flawed representation of a board, not necessarily a flawed board.
Walden has been making a board called what else… the stealth. Not a single curve on it and from what i have heard the thing works great. Just food for thaught. http://www.waldensurfboards.com/html/stealth.html
I’m not into longboards, but the idea is very interesting. Outline yes, but are the bottom and rails stealthy as well? Only joking, I must note that the wing foils of the stealth bomber are not straight lines either.
HEX rails, without any curves, work great, or loose, don’t catch, and excellent for any part of the board forward of the tail.
CAD is waaaaay overrated. You computer GEEKS think their the cat’s meow.
In practice, they might actually be excellent, but the mix between the theoritical perfection and the actual application makes for a possibly flawed product.
In the world of fins, how many flawed “CAD/computer designed and shaped” fins are out there? Thousands of different company’s shapes and designs. Look at the windsurfing world, were anything CAD designed means a popout made in CHI COM, and quite badly made there.
It’s just in the recent 2 years that CAD designed anything to do with fins has been found acceptable, and those fins require hours upon hours of hand finishing by a master craftsman.
See C-3, Debochet, Select, Tetonics. Those companies make the best CAD designed fins, and pride themselves in claiming it takes HOURS of handfinishing to make them as good as they are!!!
It seems strange to me that with all the sophisticated hi-tech CAD technology, they still have to spend hours ‘hand finishing’ a product. Sure, a light sand and a coat of gloss, but something is wrong with their design or computer or program or cnc machinist/programmer or something if they have to spend hours hand finishing. Give me the fin blank, correct templates and some good tools and I’m sure I could hand make the whole thing in a few hours. I guess they have to justify their pricing somehow.
I spend hours finishing our CAD/CAM cut fin foils because they are molds cut from S-7 toolsteel. I can assure you that there is nothing wrong with the CAD program or the Digital CMM data that we use to produce these foil cavities. The tolerance and step overs held are .0005". However, the are still toolmarks. It takes starting out with 60 grit emery cloth and working a good 4-6 hours stepping down to 16000 grit diamond polish to create a mirror finish in the cavities. And, a whole lot of beer…But, if you provide us with a master that will sell, we’ll make you the closest tolerance production foils possible in injection molding.
You made me realise my mistake in hand finishing the fin for hand finishing the mould (duh!?!). My misinterpretaion of the above post. Sounds like your set-up would be worth a visit some time. When I get my fin info I will be intersted in your opinion. Thanks for your understanding.
Anyone who wants to drop by we’re down in the surf ghetto in San Clemente. I’ll always be happy to give you a tour and discuss ideas.
Bert, I just shot some hollow fins about two weeks ago. The technology is available. But, it costs about $45,000.00 more than we’ve already spent. I’m trying to figure out fiscally responsible way to justify it.
I think Ill pay you a visit next week when I pick up foam if thats ok, Id be interested in seeing how it all comes together, as well as pick up those charity sets if its ok.