Swaylocks has always about straight forward questions and answers for me. I think it’s easily to best surfboard design website in cyberspace and feel fortunate to have made the grand connections and friends that I have here.
As you probably already know I make custom fins. I don’t charge people for giving them info about what boards I have made fins for or suggesting how they might improve the board’s performance with a fin set-up.
Some guys pick my brain and try and do it themselves. The same thing happens in my plumbing business. What’s a guy to do? If owning a curve is something that is fesible it’s news to me. I figure there are too few talented craftsmen out there anyway and if I can give somebody a good start I’m happy to do it.
My question was simple. If the answer is a 10’4" that’s fine. If it’s been surfed on a variety of board that’s great too and it must be very encouraging to you. It’s clear from your text here on swaylocks that you really think you’re on to something. That’s cool ~ maybe you are.
I’m just wondering about the board configurations and wave conditions the set-up your tauting has been surfed on. You can be sure I’m not gonna pay fifty bucks to find out though. If that’s your policy cool. Go with it, we all need sandpaper.
I was perfectly happy to tell you anything you want to know, but I just thought that it might be easier to look at a set of plans than to try and explain things verbally. How many other board builders offer instructions and plans for home builders so that they can exactly reproduce one of their designs? A few, but not many. I also have published a free set of plans but I thought that It’s not such a bad idea to sell the occasional set. Plans for many things are sold all over the place, it’s not so weird, its just a service which I offer for a few dollars. I have spent ten years and all my spare money and time developing these boards,
and if you don’t want to pay a few dollars for some information then you obviously don’t want it really.
I feel that I have been very forthcoming about my designs already. Don’t tell me that I don’t own my own designs. I don’t tell you not to sell fins.
I have explained every last detail of how to set up these fins, and I can’t really see that I have to hold people’s hand throughout the entire procedure. I have explained everything several times. I suggest that you go and read my posts and look at my pictures. You won’t really need to pay anything for the info if you look carefully. My boards are designed using basic geometrical curves which can be drawn with a piece of string and a pencil by a schoolkid. Offering plans is just a way of conveniently packaging the info for people. And don’t come on all high and mighty because I am offering something for sale. You offer stuff for sale.
Have I said It yet?
Roy
Here is a picture of a tunnel fin setup for free
I have been very straightforward with questions and answers so please don’t imply otherwise.
wow that there line says it all… thanks, Illumited all over the world with a scribed line, thanks for the tip… the Iceberg is surely a worthy investment…as soon as I pay for my mat and my tom blake book ,including a hollow plan,and my ticket to swayloholicks, Im buying me one of them plans or maybe I should just get a ball of string…the freedom of information revolution.from the San Francisco Bay area is sometimes hard to understand and concieve like the american indian concept of relationship to land stewardship as opposed to land as commodity possesion is a parallel diffcult concept for those descended from the feudalism concept of land ownership … Idea stewardship ,as opposed to ownership,shared by interested enthusiasts pushing personal best envelopes is difficult to grasp… swaylocks has spoiled many of the participants being exposed to paul jensen and docs increasingly better diagrams .reading their posts and pictures will surely quench your mild indignant view of halcyon’s comments…I’ll expect a fee for consultation but Im certain I will never get one as usual…I just had an idea … wanna buy it? if you never had one it is worth plenty.I have so many I d e a s hey theres another one didn’t Watts invent the swing machine ? the hollow surfboard design was printed in the1930’s in popular mechanix,send tom blake a check, the guys at the beach called em kook boxes…the tunnel fin came from the southbay surf shop in like 1963 do you wish to know or do you care to learn the " tunnel fin" kinda looked more like a tunnel than a piece o’pipe cross section…words from on high …ambrose… reporting live from Olympus
oh yeah nice helmet…ambrose… when you get bald like me the hair doesnt get in your eyes…[old is good]…mats dont hit ya hard in the head, dont say I didnt tell ya
I’m not here to persecute you. If I had all the money for the jobs people have stiffed me on I could send my son to college and take a years vacation in the tropics. If I wanted plans ($50.00 seems a very fair price)I’d be very clear about asking and paying for them. We have all be wronged. I’ve put my violin away. I respect the time, effort, ingenuity and industry you have invested in your project. I’m sure the set-up goes through the water very smoothly.
My question is simple. I’ll restate it:
Will you share what length boards you have run the system on and what kind of conditions have you surfed the system in?
If you think I’m attacking you. I’m sorry. I think your issues have more to do with inferences than those of implication.
Hello Ambrose, Stewardship? My name is Stewart, If you make the connection. Tom Blake can’t use a cheque right now but I send him something by way of thanks every time I wax up. Didn’t Tom sell plans too? I don’t actually make any coin out of my surfing thing. It was only an idea.
saw you candor expressed on the other thread you are doing well with the blakesta guys good going … tom blake got burned by the ecpnomics too…ambrose…sales is an art,best if you have a front man to take the inevitable flack from the public …your site is a good presentation, ambrose…
Thanks for your reply and for stashing the violin!
About the length of board I am running the system in, my present location is not very rewarding for shortboards so I usually don’t surf anything under 9’2". My son James who is 13 surfs a 7’5" with a foil and it goes well for him, but he is building a bigger board. The biggest board I have used the tunnel on is 14’9".
Regarding the surf conditions in which I use the tunnels, it’s basiclly a case of riding everything that this stretch of coast produces. Size wise I am reluctant to be drawn on a figure, but probably three times overhead would be typical on a big day, right down to ankle high. As far as quality goes, I surf them in every kind of wind blown junk and closeout that there is.
There’s an Aussie company who popped up recently with a square box tunnel including one with a central partition which could be keyed into a central fin box and which was designed for the thruster.What happened to this product around here was quite interesting. I happened to contact the editor of one of our local shortboard magazines about the possibility of running a short article on the tunnel setup, (which he knows I have been surfing for years) His reaction was " Not really because they definitely don’t work" It turns out that some the local NZ shortboard competition types took some of these Aussie square box tunnels out for a quick test during a surf expo, and couldn’t make them work. The editor was of the opinion that if they couldn’t make them work no one could, and that they are therefore no good.
Now I am not exactly in love with square tunnels but they will still work. The problem was probably due to the fact that these competitive surfers have their acts quite finely tuned on the particular equipment that they are riding, and that suddenly adding a large horizontal control surface on a lightweight shortboard is going to require a pretty steep learning curve. Also the attitude of these surfers is pretty much that they already know just about everything there is to know about surfing. In other words they are not in a learning state of mind. Also, after a couple of unsuccessful rides in public, they want to get back to what they know pretty fast!
The bottom line is that I find that the tunnels are easy to surf on big heavy boards because that way you can control the fore and aft trim more easily, but that competent surfers should be able to use em on shortboards.
By the way, if you do a bit of plumbing, Rich, what are you waiting for? (With all that plumbing tube lying around for quick prototypes)
what most people mean when they ask that question is “what do you do for money ?” ( I’m not sure that you meant that but here’s an answer anyway) I have a small income which I don’t have to work for. This income is enough for my family to live on if we are very frugal. By frugal I mean that we use woodstoves fired by scrounged firewood for all heating, cooking, and hot water heating, and have been doing so for more than thirteen years. We bake all our own bread and live almost entirely on cheap locally grown fruit and vegetables. All our clothing except for wetsuits and footwear comes from recycled clothing shops. We live in old buses, vans, and caravans. All my boards are built in an old caravan except for those over twelve feet which are built under a canvas awning during the summer.
So for a job, I homeschool my nine children, build boards, do housework, cook food, design boards, get firewood, write, and go surfing.
That sounds like the life to live right there. Awesome. I wish I could do that. Where most of me is willing to do that, the materialism in me forbids it. Thanks
His reaction was " Not really because they definitely don’t work" It turns out that some the local NZ shortboard competition types took some of these Aussie square box tunnels out for a quick test during a surf expo, and couldn’t make them work. The editor was of the opinion that if they couldn’t make them work no one could, and that they are therefore no good…
Now I am not exactly in love with square tunnels but they will still work. Roy
Roy,
I’m not being antagonistic, but you haven’t tried the half tube fin on a shortboard but you say they work. But someone who has tried a half tube variation (square box tunnel) on a shortboard says that they don’t work, and you then basically say that those guys are close minded and not willing to relearn.
Maybe they just don’t work on shortboards??? Can you get one installed on a shortboard & then give us some your first hand experience.
You have to remember, the Fat Penguin scars are still tender…
I watched Simon Anderson ride a thruster and single fin at Wiamea bay 25ft and he made every wave on the single and got caught in the lip on the thruster 3 times with some horribble wipeouts…
.the most used turn in big waves is big bottom turns …the single loves a big bottom turn…the thruster loves a snap in the pocket…most people dont even get near this zone in big surf.(pocket)…so If your honest with yourself work out wat you do on the waves and how big you will be riding.youll find the right board…aloha Cheyne
I reckon you are probably right. The fore and aft trim for a tunnel fin is critical and it is much harder to get it right with a very light board. So I am not really saying that the surfers themselves were being closed minded, rather that are likely to be in a ‘grooved swing’ with their surfing, and that the test was thus not really a fair one. What I mean about the half tunnel working is that it does definitely work, but this obviously doesn’t mean that it works on every board, for every surfer, in every situation. My main point was that the editor assumed that if the competitive shortboarders could not immediately make it work, that therefore the thing is automatically of no value and should ‘soon disappear’ (his words). This was in spite of the fact that he knows that I am able to make them work very well.
The tunnel works very well on a 7’5" we have here, but it is a very heavy board compared with the modern thruster. The fin will work on a modern thruster if and only if the nose does not lift too much. If the nose lifts too much then the board will just pop out of the water like a cork and go nowhere. I keep the nose down with the help of a heavy board. The nose of a super light board with a tunnel will have to be kept at the right angle using muscular control all the time. I find that this is very difficult (I had a 6’1" with a tunnel), but then again there are many talented shortboarders out there who might be able to do it. Maybe it is feasible, I just don’t know.
Hi Cheyne, we just surf at Mount Maunganui mainly these days though we did three years in Raglan and three years on Great Barrier Island. I like the Mount as there is plenty of room for me to be a wave hog and lots of lovely closeouts. I am a beachbreak freak. Roy. (And we get the odd barrel) etc
