I’m starting a new longboard for a friend of mine who has some dated longboard experience but normally surfs midlengths with low-to-moderate rockers. He wants a longboard for summer conditions but he’s not interested in noseriding. My plan so far is a piggy template (9.0 x 22; 17" tail, 16" nose) with the wide point moved back 5", and I’m going to run it as a quad 'cause he likes quads and fat assed boards.
My question relates to moving the center of mass, deck rocker and foil back a bit to take advantage of the curve in the template and the fin cluster, and how that relates to the bottom rocker. He’s going to want to pop up and surf the board from the fins with maybe a short shuffle forward to trim but he’s nowhere near the point of being able to mimic a 12-yr old ballet dancer up and down the length of the board. He’s aiming the board strictly at small/weak so he’s not looking for a lot of versatility.
Should I move the apex of the bottom rocker back a little relative to the standard rockers in the blank, and if so, by how much? Where would you put it?
You bring up another discussion relative to continuous rocker vs staged rockers, and where to put the breaks in a (lets say) 3-stage rocker.
I think most novices (like me) just pick a blank and move the template around until we get the numbers we want at the tips. A few will order custom rockers in the PU blanks but that involves bending the foam into rockers they weren’t molded for. Even with adjusted rockers that doesn’t touch the question of how - or if - the rocker apex should be adjusted to complement different curves in the template and volume distribution.
Most noserider shapes carry the volume and thickness flow forward and are designed to be trimmed forward. The piggies carry their volume to the rear and are designed to be surfed from the back half of the board. It seems like these two design extremes should employ different fulcrum points in the rocker - or am I just being dumb about it?
I’m no rocker expert but I like a continuous gentle arc for my longboard rockers (so. calif. pointbreak surf), I see that on a lot of modern longboards, but some guys put a kick in the tail if its gonna be a “high performance” longboard (surfed off the tail). Just my 2cents to get the ball rolling. I also like single fin longboards, so I’m not much help on the quad setup.
I think some guys here are building hulls and Simmons shapes off of stock rockers by moving their templates forward, sometimes by a lot. Same with the guys using the 7-3A to build shorter boards with the low tail rockers. So it’s not just me who should be taking an interest in the effects of moving the apex of the rocker rearward.
Hi Gdaddy, I met a guy named Yaar43. He was really stoked on the whole reverse rocker thing. I don't have all the details but Yaar43 took a longboard blank and flipped around and used the tail as the nose....not a new idea...I think it's the 9'1" or 10'1" Yater blank....Might be fun to test drive one........