It depends on what kinds of waves you intend to surf the board in. For flat/mushy conditions the lower rockers are no drama whatsoever and they paddle quite a bit better. OTOH, if you’re planning on sharing head-high rivermouth barrels with the pros (and Paul) then take his advice and go with a conventional shortboard with lots of rocker.
Some of the Simm-Fish variants out there have tail rockers approaching 0". The Lis-style fishes commonly run 1" - 1.5", sometimes a little more. Nose rockers of 3.0" - 3.5" are real common among fishies. There’s nothing unusual about your template or your rocker. TO ME your layout reminds me of the …Lost Plank. The reviews for those have been pretty good.
In your place and at your weight I would have gone thinner, like maybe 2.5". For context, I’m 53, weigh 190#+ and one of my daily drivers is a 5-4 fishie with 17" nose and tail x 2.75" thick; 1.5" tail + 3.25" nose rockers. The way I cut it that board it has more volume than a 6-6 CI Flyer and in mushy conditions it paddles better, too. Trust me when I tell you that neither I nor anyone else who’s surfed it lacks for float or paddle in those conditions. But that’s the key for that board - the mushy conditions. In a faster wave I switch up to a narrower board with more length and rocker.
The thing is that if you build a board that’s wide and flat then for the most part that’s how it will surf.
Thanks to everyone for their help so far. Here are a few shots of the board as it stands now, almost complete. I'm having trouble with the rails as they move towards the nose. I went from a 1/2" tuck to a 3/4" tuck to a 50/50 rail but the fade sucks. I could fade it back towards the tail to make the transition nicer but I'm a little worried. Take a look at the pictures and let me know what you think and if its fixable.
built one really similar to that about a year ago, set it up with five fin boxes but never took out the quads, it works great in small surf but really gets interesting to ride in bigger stuff
looks good, love the old school planshape, ...re the rails, just roll them evenly and keep feeling them, little bit by little bit making sure both sides are same, it'll be sweet, maybe have a board similar to keep referring to, go for it.....
