role board length plays in fin toe setting

General Discussion
1

I know the more rocker you have the less toe you set and vise virsa but what role does board length play in the overall toe setting? if any. I have been wondering since i made a few 8’ rental boards and the toe looks off I toed the fines in +1.5’’ off the nose. I haven’t installed the fin plugs yet so i can change them if there off. thanks for any help.

 

2

Not sure if this helps at all, but I’ve taken to setting my fins using a construction laser. I level the board and setup the laser on its tripod. The get the laser aligned to the stringer and set my distance from the tip of the nose. Then I put a pin in each reference dot and shoot it with the laser beam. Once the pin is lite-up I draw my line with a straight-edge following the laser beam. Then swing over and do the other side. This method ensures that each side is symetrical but it does not address setting quad fin sets parallel on each side. But I don’t think that is the best way to do it anyway (but I certainly could be wrong)

This method allows me to set a lot of different angles on different boards by setting the tripod up closer to or farther from the tip of the nose.

Hope it helps.

3

Your gnarly! So what kind of Toe numbers to you arrive at? With your method is sounds like the wider the tail the toe increases?

I set the toe based on another method than what you learned in the Shaping 101 video.

Takes me 60 seconds to set fins. {Thrusters, Quads, Bonsers, Five fins} doesn't matter!

It's funny how compicated every one makes it?

4

I just got your pm what method are you using I leaned mine a few years ago from a shaper i was working for but mostly did only longboards so it went in one ear and out the other he had shaped under bill barnfeild for a while and that was the method that ive seen him talk about on here but it seems with a wider tail it pulls the toe way in I must be missing something.

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6

Hi surfding,

I'm a garage hack having fun building boards in my garage. I have no ego in regards to surfboard design and have no professional ambitions in this field.  Would you share your method? Please?  Mike

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Hi surfding,

I saved the image of your jig.  Please explain so I can make one.  Mike

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I shape a lot of boards ane this jig helps save time plus it's spot on! Sorry7 the photo is upside down--

Surfding

11

Ya know, I never really measure them. I just set em up and go. You may be right about the toe increasing with a wider tail, but it’s also a function of the distance from the nose to the tripod, so that mitigates it somewhat. One thing that this method buys me is a way to setup a consistent angular displacement between fins in a set and be able to mirror that on the other side. I may be all wrong on this, but it seems correct to me that the forward fin should be very slightly more toed than the trailing fin. If I am wrong, someone please enlighten me.

I sort of fell into this method after reading a bunch of postings here and seeing how most shapers, that I know of, just use a framing square and their favorite template, I wanted something a bit different. Mostly I wanted to be repeatable and this serves that very well.

It does take a few minutes, but I have time to spare so no big…

12

I use something like Surfding's.  The little peg touches the rail, the stringer is lined up on one of those parallel lines and the holes are used as a guide to punch the dots.  I have a pretty standard minimal toe-in I use on most all of my boards.  I don't line up 'X' inches off the nose or whatever.  It's in the tool section of resources pages.

 

 

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13

it seems correct to me that the forward fin should be very slightly more toed than the trailing fin. If I am wrong, someone please enlighten me.

True

Quad = 1/4" toe front fins; 1/8" toe back fins

Truster = 1/4" toe front fins standard; 3/16" guns

Bartt it's cool whatever you method. I'm just sharing what I do!

John has a cool looking jug as well.

Surfding

14

Have you seen Greenlight Brian’s Versa-Square?

http://stores.greenlightsurfsupply.com/Detail.bok?no=216

Works great and is dead on. I use it a bit differently than the demo, which everybody will, but it’s an easy, accurate way to measure fin layout if you use standard toe-in specs, and don’t measure off the nose.

Guess he’s currently out of stock.

15

[quote="$1"]

Not sure if this helps at all, but I've taken to setting my fins using a construction laser. I level the board and setup the laser on its tripod. The get the laser aligned to the stringer and set my distance from the tip of the nose. Then I put a pin in each reference dot and shoot it with the laser beam. Once the pin is lite-up I draw my line with a straight-edge following the laser beam. Then swing over and do the other side. This method ensures that each side is symetrical but it does not address setting quad fin sets parallel on each side. But I don't think that is the best way to do it anyway (but I certainly could be wrong)

This method allows me to set a lot of different angles on different boards by setting the tripod up closer to or farther from the tip of the nose.

Hope it helps.

[/quote]   A red laser dot is usually about 1/4" diameter...........is that really accurate???

16

Not if you set the verticle line mode on the lens setup. Mine is a very fine line. The dot is not very useful for this sort of thing…

17

HI SurfDing - Trying to clear up my understanding:  Are those numbers off 4 1/2 inches?

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[quote="$1"]

Quad = 1/4" toe front fins; 1/8" toe back fins

Truster = 1/4" toe front fins standard; 3/16" guns

[/quote]

Is this 1/4" over 4" or just the base length of the fins?

Just two different settings?  No adjustments for tail width and/or distance from rail?  Very interesting...

I'm curious, at what length do you call it a gun?  7, 7.5, 8, ...?

What about longboards?

 If it's any help, for shorty's, 1/4 over 4.  For lb's I use 1/4 over 4.5.  Other sizes fall somewhere in between.

19

I used to be an "off the nose" toe-in guy....I even made a tool and posted pics a while ago...

But

When designing the Versa-square for Toe-in I asked for some input from some long time, established shapers.

Handshaper, (who posts here on Sways) explained fin toe-in to me very simply. Now, to me, it makes so much more sense to establish a fixed and consistent toe-in strategy for all your boards. Although I'm sure some here on Sways may not agree...

In my summation: It's all about angle of attack of the fins in relation to the wave's energy. Why do the fins care where the nose is?

Here's some of what handshaper explained:

"But for me the reality is that I care more about how the fin is oriented to the centerline of the board and not where the nose of the board might be located. For example, if I made a 5' 3" board I would still want a 1/4" of toe-in, but if you look at where that would be relative to the nose it is probably going to be 6" off the nose, while on a 6' 1" board it might be 2 or 3" off the nose.

So what I care about is the angle of attack on the fin, and this has absolutely nothing to do with where the nose of the board is located. In fact, I think it is really bad to position the toe-in this way because it is so inconsistent that you will never get a clear understanding of the correct to-in.
Depending on the board I change the toe-in a little, so for instance, a 2+1 would be 3/16". A gun with a very pulled tail would be 3/16" also. All of my quads I setup with 1/4" of toe-in up front and 3/16" at the back. I do not like them to be parallel as I see them working in unison so I want them to be like a separated foil (think slow speed setup on an airplane wing when they are coming in to land)

If you use this layout mechanism you will se that most of the time the fins end up pointing a little off the nose so the end results are maybe similar to the more common approach of laying them out."
~Brian
20

what I understand of it:

 

Toe-in helps to generate speed. When you push the board down, you push the board sideways, the toe-in will make an angle off attack that propels you forward.

At high speeds you will need a smaller angle of attack. So big/fast wave boards need less toe and small/slow wave boards more. Big wave boards are usually bigger (so that’s my view in the “off the nose method”) , but it’s not always like that!

Longboards need less toe because you don’t need to generate that much speed by pumping.