“People put off by what the little ball looks like should take a look at what an injury inflicted by a pointy nose looks like. I had a friend fall in the whitewater and shoot his board right at me, he wasn’t even close but he had a long leash, the tip of his pointy shortboard hit my hip like a spear. It hurt like hell, I couldn’t surf for awhile, walked funny for a couple months, and now a half year later it still hurts some. My hip was deep purple red and pink, now that really looked awful.”
I feel your pain, sorta.
Since turning 60, sometime ago, I stopped with the "“pointy” stuff for myself, photo…
Note, and since 60+ I hate points and tend to blunt them as best I can.
My test pilot “Boy” is reconsidering as he ages.
Here is a photo of a “bonce at Zuma”
HA, you can see the hair!
Son like father, hardheaded…
I really want to keep the conversation going on this, as I think we can do better on collision safety, and I especially feel that backyarders have way more freedom to explore possibilities than those with a commercial outlook. So I’m gonna have another approach to this coming up soon, stay tuned 
Every part of a surfboard is hard enough to harm the human body. Just having your groin shoved down onto the deck of your board can be really painful. I’ve had numerous bruises and lacerations from hitting or getting hit by a board, some that required stitches. I’ve had too many slices from fins. I am lucky that I haven’t lost an eye or any other part of my body, but I’ve come close. December 1978, I almost lost an eye from a loose board. 6 months out of the water.
Surfing is dangerous.
Thanks Charlie. The next time I come over to see Bernie, I’ll try to drag him over to say hi. Not sure when it will be, but it won’t be soon. He’s so busy, I never see him much. Even phone calls take 3 or 4 tries.
I will give you a heads up and make sure we can plan a good time to come by.
Take care!
Yep. It is. One reason why I’m always thinking of ways to try to make it a little safer.
So my rubber ball was designed to soften the impact of a nose poke, but would never really catch on, haha, so I decided to try something a little more socially and aesthetically acceptable.
I chopped the nose off, glued on a scrap of foam, and blended it in. I’m thinking I will just coat it with resin. Lacking fiberglass, and a stringer, it should be far less lethal upon impact than a standard shortboard nose.
I also got the fin placement measurements, and will post those up later, just for the record.
noice one
Thanks, always appreciate a positive response!
Brushed a little resin on the raw foam.
And drew up the fin locations. IIRC I’ve got 4° cant on the rears and 6° on the fronts.
1/2 " of tow seems like a lot. I don’t go past 1/4" in front, and often just do 1/8". I do zero tow for rears on my newer quads.
I like FCS H2 fins right now. I’m using 1/8" tow and no cant for those. Setup as tri fins.
Thanks for catching that, it was supposed to say 1/4" toe on the fronts, I will go back and correct that.
I should add that the numbers I mentioned for cant are using Probox inserts on the front boxes. I can switch them out to 4, 6, or 8 degrees of cant, but the H2 fins have about 5 degrees cant and a slight bit of tow built in to the tabs. This ends up with about 5 degrees cant and 3/16" of tow for the front fins.
How have you found the concave deck???
To ride?
Great for paddling great for riding
Glad I found this thread, I completely forgot I had a whole thread on the mainstream forum, was thinking this was another E&B thread. I have a thread there on aging, and designing surfboards with that in mind, where I did touch on some of the design concepts for this board.
Anyway, life goes on, and things change. I’m retired now, not working by the beach anymore, and spent the past year recovering and re-habbing from hip replacement surgery. So for the past few years, I have really stuck mostly with my old school single fin boards, specifically my 9’ rounded pin became my go-to board. Also rode my standard 9’ square tail quite a bit. Cuz with the bad hip, then with the surgery recovery, I just wanted easy paddling, easy pop-up, and a shape to cruise with.
But I’m finally over the hump on my recovery from surgery, its been a slow and difficult process, and my favorite board kinda died from old age, and sitting outside in the heat a bit too much. I think its repairable (the foam has shrunk or curdled in places), but no matter, its time I started riding some of my other shapes. Specifically, this one, which I made 2 years ago, but have only ridden a few times.
Took it out the other day, it was small, about 2-3’, but I had a blast on a few choice waves. Which has me motivated to stick with this board for awhile, and finally get to know it better. I tried to pay attention to the ride, because somebody said my fin toe in was too much, but so far the ride seems fine. Its a bit of an equalizer, because I don’t get out in the water as much, maybe once a week on a good run, so I really appreciate the easy paddling. But once I’m up, I’m finding it fun to break out of the old single fin lines and move a little differently on the wave. Hopefully I can get some decent waves this season, and see how I really like the board, but so far I’m feeling pretty stoked on it, and pretty stoked to be surfing without hip pain for the first time in years.
As a side-bar, in addition to the deck concave, I have also made my paddling more comfortable by purchasing a Rib Rocket padded vest which I wear over my wetsuit, and which I really love. Since I’ve only been out surfing a few times in the past year, my ribs would get real sore when I’d go out. But this vest has eliminated that problem, it was $99 on Amazon.
BTW, here’s a few screen shots that I found in my E&B thread on surfboard design for old guys. One is the Album Surfboards shape that captures the “generic shortboard” outline I was striving to imitate (technically my board is a midlength, but conceptually its really sort of a “longboard in disguise”, haha). There is a Proctor surfboard that caught my eye because of the thickness (over 3") and the step at the rails, and a Michael Junod board with similar length & thickness dimensions to mine.
…hello Huck; dimensions lie. You are looking for shapes with those dimensions but intended like a big HP. Here is what I make for those requiring that.
The basic dimensions are like what you posted but the shape is not.
beautiful!
it kinda seems like anything over 3" thick is a bit outside the box, but now the blanks are available to make it possible, maybe due to SUP popularity
i have to second huck on this one in spades. the rib rocket and other paddle air products are life changing.
after almost forty years of grinding against the deck, my xiphoid is fully calcified and protrudes considerably. low bodyfat and considerably less of the manly pecs than i had in my prime have things digging into the deck badly in my normal paddling position. it’s even worse in sloppy conditions where you’re digging in deep, but with your head held up out of the wash/spray. the rib rocket vest is a miracle, especially in summer conditions and with shorter boards. on midlengths and longboards, the paddle air is really nice, as you can inflate the bladder more on the inside so you can stroke out with chest padded and shoulders/neck high, but then blow it down outside so you can drop your head and shoulders back down for better entry. so hard to penetrate and really drop with the elevated head/shoulder position. the paddle air can leave you a little high and wobbly on a shortboard, depending upon deck rocker and foil. really tough on something like a fish with flat deck and bottom curve.
i would have so made fun of people who bitched about paddling issues when i was young, but your perspective changes with time. it got to a point where i thought i was going to have to quit surfing or have surgery in order to paddle normally. then my little brother gave me one of the early paddle air sleeved tops as a gift. he had no idea how great a gift it really was.
sort of an aside, but i couldn’t resist commenting. i love their products.
-cbg
The thicker blanks are an effort to satisfy CNC needs for custom rockers. What was originally hand shaped from a barely 3” Clark 9’8S, is now CNCed from a 3 1/2” 9’9Y. The machine puts the final rocker in it, whether nose, tail or overall. Some manufacturers offer two versions of the same blank. A Standard and a “T” (ie Thick).
Not exactly a pretender; but at 7’10x 23" x3” and my advanced age, I could probably ride this EPS Marko myself.
