Single concave designs & Maurice Cole

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=887oTdGshzM&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D887oTdGshzM

Maurice Cole has taken his tow board designs and put them to use on boards for the regular surfer. Single concave designs. Check out the video. 

I did not find this already on Sways, so here ya go.... Thoughts?

There are a few other YouTube episodes with Mr. Cole on these boards

gotta say I'm a little disappointed that on a Surfboard Design Forum there is no interest in discussing the latest designs by Maurice Cole.

Video from 2011,  It was discussed at length before.

Yes, flat rocker in the tail goes faster.  I don’t go flat on mine, but I use around a 41’ tail radius.  Yes, a clean concave can be made by drawing a flat line at a 45 degree angle.

http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/shaping-concave-and-rocker

http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/stringerless-build-thread Shame all the pictures are gone now.

when it comes to concaves I think the mad scientist Greg Webber has Maurice beat on all accounts back when Maurice was playing around with the EEV Webber was doing massive rocker concaved bottom bananas with the two Shane’s remember that? I think Loehr say a banana brought back from AUS by theta big tall ripper with the long hair who’s name escapes me now…

super scoop by Webber circa 2011

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and where as Maurice was palying around with these fins on his tow boards:

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Webber has been fooling around with these fins

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George Gall (plus one surfboards) does a lot of work with Maurice Cole. Check out the plus one facebook page.

Bernie and Harry, thanks for the input. Dunno if I could even float one of Webber's scooped out concaves!

The pics attached and on George's facebook page show the bottom concave nicely. I'm right in the middle of shaping out the bottom concave from a 7'7" A US Blank. I need to reach a compromise between the concave depth and the thickness. I have about a 1/4" of  concave with 2 7/8" thickness in the middle. The board overall will be a 7'5" speed egg (ResinHead template) for surfing Church.

 

The Maurice Cole video nicely shows what John Mellor has talked to StingRay about in the past. Laying a straight edge on a 45' angle along the bottom to show the flat within the concave.

 

The Loehr/Webber story goes like this. In the mid-to-late 80s, GL was shaping these hyper-rockered, very narrow, very thin, heavily concaved boards for Bill Hartley. We all thought Greg and Bill were crazy, but as boards started to thin out by 1989, it started to make sense.

Hartley travels a lot, so Webber saw Bill surfing Angourie on one of these boards about that time, had a look at the board, and took inspiration. 

Hartley also surfed the inlet a lot, there was this high school kid named Kelly surfing with him all the time. 

BIll Hartley

that’s the guy I remember from back then used to always make the mags

Big guy who could rip like Wes Laine

always had these hyper nose kicked spacey boards like Reno’s ski nose

I knew Greg Loehr was involved didn’t know the sequence but he used to talk about Hartley here years ago

I remember those banana rocker super concave boards of webber in the aussie contests

the two Shane’s, Shane Herring and the other Shane ( I can’t seem to place his last name) were the toast of the surfing world back then

reminds me of the contrast placed on the style difference between Parko and Mick when they were groms

where Mick surfed more like Herring and Parko like the other Shane.

In the late 60’ early 70’s I was heavily onto deep single concave even sent a design mock up drawing to Greg Noll as a stupid grom he never answered

it kind of faded away until i discovered Jeff Alexander’s Gemini twin nose boards and I truely got the benefit of those deep single concaves channeling water thru the tail kind of like the three fin  bonzers of old.

then Greg Griffin showed me the benefits of pure flat bottom and sharp tucked rails nose to tail

Steve Morgan and Rex have been doing some deep hour glass concaves that require you moving the board around allot like the old banana rocker ones.

I think Maurice has a nice compromise between flat and concave and going small. But I think those boards work best in the juice than with slop so they’re not really an all around design like some of the others.

Be interesting to hear Maurice compare the yellow EEV at Haleiwa versus his new concave at the same spot with Curren as test pilot.

I was at Tropical Blends earlier this week and got to check out a 6’2" epoxy PU Metro and as interesting as it was on the next rack was a Stretch hand made custom F4 quad made from Marko foam and Resin Research Epoxy. And if for some reason I had the choice I’d go with the Stretch F4 Quad instead of the metro. Just Saying…

Captainsurf,

If you have any questions about how to get the deeper concaves to work with your shape, I might be

able to give some pointers, just ask away.  BTW, the EEV board is actually very closely related to the

deep con Pro-Tow and Metro, once the right shaping perspective is taken.

 

regards,

George

Just got to ride a 6’ Metro and am really impressed - fast and loose - very confidence inspiring board.

oneula , I’m not sure what it is with you and Maurice Cole’s boards. Here and at Surfermag you seem to be having  little jibes.

I dissagree regarding the Metro being not an all round board. Our default swells are 6 and 7s wave period onshore wind swells. My  Metro is low volume and works as well as anything else I have tried in these conditions except flat rockered or boat like high volume wide tail grovelers. It  can perform in decent stuff also.  My Maurice Cole boards were made on a machine and finished in France.

Irrespective of the moderate hyperbole "no spin out " etc I have found they have a unique feel without being quirky and require for me little adjustment except speeding up my reaction times (there is no instability just that they can turn really fast ). I like that I can catch waves on a  low volume board and I haven’t found any limitations yet. Incredible hold. No tracking. I am using G3 instead of my weight suggestion  and usual G5 size fins. Not tried the  C drive fins. My only experience of curved fins is the speed dialler turbo’s.

Unfortunately I don’t have a hand made custom F4 but have only used the TL2 version.

Mark

 

hi George, thank you so much. It seems MC's bottom concaves can be as low as you can go. The concave seems to flatten at the trailer fin going flat to tail, rail to rail. Is this correct?

On a 7'5" fuller shape how deep would the concave be? (7'5" x 21 3/4 x 2 7/8,  nose ~ 15 /  tail ~13 1/2)

Along the profile, at the rail how far out does the concave go. Or where does the rail "flat" start? (how wide is the area along the rail between the edge and the concave) Is this area greater along the wider part of the board and less towards the nose and tail?

Is there a performance, or how they board will ride, trade off somewhere in regards to how large or small this area is?

 

again, thank you very much!

Name withheld due to bat shit crazy ex who has trolled me here

Hi Cap’n,

 

Wow, really good questions.  First I’ll get you the basic answers, then I’ll throw something out there that

Maurice did with me, kind of a “board designer’s boot camp.”

 

First, yes the concave may seem to spread as you progress aft, then flare out around the trailing fin.

 

7’5" would probably be hitting close to 1 inch at the max spot, though MC has gone well over to about

1-1/8" after that they start to become harder to paddle, though the primary function is still there.

 

“Is there a performance trade off?”  Yes, if they are not shaped exactly “spot on” they can be a real

bogger.  Certain elements need to be there if you want it to work.  I’ll try to get back here to delineate

those things, but first you’ll need to get your head around something very important…

 

…STOP LOOKING AT THE CONCAVE.  Look at the various rockers, the easiest to look at is down

the stringer.  The next rocker is along the “rail line” (along the tucked edge.)  Let’s stop there, (it

took me a long while to get my head around what Maurice was talking about, thinking back I see that

looking at these two things will help get the right perspective/reference frame.)

 

When you look down one of his boards, there is minimal rocker down the stringer, I’d say ZERO off

the tail of some models.  BUT, along the rail, there is a MASSIVE amount of rocker…     …the by-product

is concave.  But never mind the concave/channeling/lift ideas for the moment, let it go.  

 

When you surf the board, running “flat” down-the-line the board is mainly riding on the center rocker, BUT

as you turn, and make a demand on the rail/outer edge zone, the board has a BUNCH of rocker, and it

gets really loose.

 

Now, admittedly there is a lot more going on and I can detail that if there is any desire for it.  I’ve made a ton

of these, done the programming for them, hand shaped some, done SUPs even, and they concept does work,

and quite well as I am very picky.

 

Another thing to consider is the blank.  This was the biggest headache as we ramped up production, one of

Maurice’s Metros may be almost 3 inches thick, but with the concave, you’ll need a blank close to 4 inches

or even more if you are milling.  To further the challenge, the concave (rail rocker) is maximum AFT of the

center of the board, and most conventional (P/U) blanks are not designed for that kind of use, so think THICK

when you go shopping, ha ha.

 

Lastly for now, are the edges, which are sharp nose to tail, which don’t catch and make paddling easier, actually

“cancel out” some of the drag they present when paddling (imagine the rails dipping down deep because

of all their rocker, like Hobie Cat hulls) and they slice through the water quite well when they have a sharp edge.

 

Anyways, if there is more interest, I’ll try to enlighten (or confuse,) if I can…

 

regards,

George

 

 

George, 

hopefully the rest of Sway’s has an interest. I do. I will try to digest what you have written. I’ll do what I can with the board I am currently working on. Please continue to enlighten as you can.

thanks!

 

 

Hi Cap’n,

 

Okay so you have the blank going already, well I think it is time well spent focusing

on making that one a winner rather than getting too deep into theory, ha ha.

Do you have any pics of what you’ve done so far?

Also, if you can post pics, maybe show with strips of masking tape the two rocker

lines that I am talking about.  The reason is to see that you understand the approach

to getting a deep single to flow right.

 

Might I suggest to focus on the smoothness of these two rockers then we can move

on to how to evacuate the “in-between” areas, what to feel/look for and the outer

“panel” or “land” as we call it (the transition of the single concave to the outer rail zone.)

 

regards,

George

Cool. I will take some pics and post them up. That’ll be interesting as the pic feature here always baffles me.  It’ll be sometime tomorrow.

thanks for your time and effort!

I'm Turtle.......not Kane

the surfboard will have a killer glass job

Ray

 

There’s a guy here in Hawaii AirBoy808 who rides allot of different and unique stuff. We both ordered Assyms from George Gall at the same time a couple of years ago. He even got an assym from Ekstrom with the Bufo 3D glassing (sold that too).

He recently posted his 5’11" Metro on Craigslist here in Hawaii and when I saw it I was really interested having followed all the reviews and “tales from the chook shed” videos. But after a long conversation I think he convinced me that it probably wasn’t what I thought it was. I also had a similar discussion with George when I was at his shop in April picking up my new reverse assym and it seem to back up what I heard from AirBoy808. I finally got to see another brand new metro someone was trying to unload on Craigslist and via consignment http://honolulu.craigslist.org/oah/spo/3929397694.html and although they look interesting they don’t seem that much more radical a concept than the Jeff Alexander twin nose Gemini’s I have been riding since the mid 2000s with a 1" deep concave through the bottom as well. Marshall Crum has been experimenting with a unique concave design  with Keone Downing that is completely opposite of Maurice’s with an abrubt end to the concave before the rails and the tail which he says creates tail lift and some close schiool friends seem to validate the design.

I still agree with the flat 45 degree bottom, dual rocker variance concept and ultra short length that Maurice is proposing with his concave boards because my Gemini’s have been designed like that as well they just encorporate a reverse outline  profile and twin hull design along with everything Maurice is doing. 

Maybe one day I’ll come across a used metro I can buy/try that will actually float my fat ass 200lbs but most used ones I have seen for sale have been around 6’ or under for kids who I am old enough to be their father. Just surprised to see them on sale since they seem so hard to get custom.

The build he just did with Plus One with the cut’s out and carbon inlays was pretty unique.

Jim the owner of Tropical Blends where I saw the used Metro told me he was at George’s shop when Maurice was there and got a good breakdon from Maurice about the design. Its funny that I still don’t see allot of shops including Jim’s distributing them here for Maurice even though he comes here quite often. Funny that when I was at Jim’s store looking at the used custom Stretch and Metro, the only boards that ganered the biggest interest where the firewire’s especially the tomo vanguards and sweet/baked potatos go figure…

Love to give a metro a go at Hanalei or Lani’s where the long walls are deserving of something designed  like a metro just got to catch the wave first as Maurice says…

I guess in the end there’s many ways to skin the same cat. I admire Maurice as I do Griffin as I do Stretch as I do Alexander, as I do Webber and Richardson for being willing to out of the box. 

but in honor of AB and in celebration of my age bracket I’m going back to 6+ channels in all forms for a bit. There’s just something sexy about an AB tyled 6 channel that no other design exudes.

Ray means he's only going to let me stir the resin ;)

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Ray means he's only going to let me stir the resin ;)

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It's easy, just remember to breath through your eyes.