Rockers - How flat is flat?

General Discussion
1

I’m getting ready to put together a small/mushy wave board for my youngest kid. He’s a good surfer. He wants to push the envelope with length and rocker for a fishy thruster. I may end up with a thruster in name only.

How far can I push the rocker on a 5ft board?

2

General rule, the shorter the board, the flatter the rocker CAN be. For the most part, it comes down to personal choice.

3

Thanks for the reply. I guess my question is what the practical limitations are. I mean, I see the alaia boards with no rocker other than some belly on the nose. However, between that and the parallel rails that seems to put some limitations on the arcs they can cut up or down the face.

How much rocker do they build into the flatter keel fishes? I was thinking about going that route with perhaps a little extra kick in the last couple inches or so, just to keep the pearling to a minimum.

4

Steve Brom makes some REALLY flat-rockered fish, and some people absolutely swear by them.

There used to be some great photos online, but I guess his site has been down a while… Only came up with one rocker shot through google images…

5

That’s exactly what I thought of when I saw Craftee’s comment on rocker being the source of lift overall on the Sunova thread. The fish (Brom, and others) shows you can manage aft release with outline and fin and probably bottom contour other than rocker.

6

GDaddy,

I think you’ll get a well performing board, @ 5 feet, with a nose rocker of 2 1/2 to 3 inches (max), and a tail rocker of one inch. It will be quite servicable.

7

Thanks a lot guys, that was exactly the type of input I was looking for.

8

Yeah, good stuff with flat rocker about 24", lots of accelerating V to keep the tail tips from pushing the nose down.

To keep nose up, most go WPoint forwards, lots of diff between WPoint and tail width one foot off.

I did quite a few successful small wave boards with flat tail rocker at the stringer, but kept them to rounded diamond tails with tons of V from flat WPoint.

Don’t know how the tips of fish would react on bottom turns, trying to push the nose down …

9

i just measured my fish i am building and i have 4.5 nose rocker with 1’’ tail rocker. i think the tail is a bit flat but its glassed now so it cannot be changed.

i would think anything under 2" in flat but thats just me