Trace # 3

General Discussion
1

Hey Sways,

It’s time to route this puppy for the fin boxes.

Mark Going was my coach on this one and I have to say the guy’s tops in my book. He’s very generous and very approachable not to mention be a complete master shaper IMHO. Anybody looking for a custom board in Santa Cruz is well advised to check in on him at the Coast Road Stables on the North Side of Santa Cruz. I’m also indebted to Joey Thomas for letting me use his shaping room (I cleaned up, sharpened tools for him and am making fins for he and his gal.) Anyone looking for a super high performance longboard or a midlength twinzer should look Joey up.

I took about a dozen photos today and attached a few here. I have more if anyone is interested. Comments are questions are welcome so go for it.

Details:

Clark 8’7" R Super Blue blank –

3/8’basswood X external 1/12" red cedar – teeband stringer.

    Fangtail Quad 

    8'1"x13.5"x21.0x13.875"x3.0625" 

    Wide point: 2.5" forward

    Nose Rocker: 4.75"

    Tail Rocker: 2.625"

Good Surfin’, Rich

2

Hey Sways,

I haven’t taken any photos of the glass work yet, but I want to share my experiences with the laminating ordeal. I call it that because it’s kinda messy and is far and away my least favorite part of the board building process. I always feel like I’m f#*%in" up from the get-go for some reason. I guess it’s because I’m under the gun cause I know the resin is going off and I have a deadline I’m working against.

First off the Resin Research epoxy was warmer than the blank and the space I did the working was about 65%. I had no problems at all with the blank off-gasing or bubbles forming under the glass. The laps didn’t want to stick and well as I would have hoped they would, but with a little work I got them to stay put – novice that I am.

I did the bottom with a couple layers of 4oz and it went ok. Making the cuts on the underside of the board for the cut lap was no fun at all with the guuuuummmmmmmy epoxy, but I got it pretty even. I felt like a total amature. I put the board outside to let the bottom get hard and then did the deck with 6oz S full length and a 6oz E 3/4 patch. I made vee cut where the patch ended up on the nose. When the board got real tacky I inspected it carefully and found that I wasn’t happy with the way the color had taken on the foam – lots of irregularities for small indentations and scares from transporting and handling the blank.(It sure would have been nice to be able to take the thing straight from the shaping room into a pristine glass shop.) Anyway, I decided to experiment with the R.R epoxy a little. I shot a hot coat of tinted resin the same as I had laminated with on to the deck without any Additive “F” figuring that because the board was still a long way from being cured (quite tacky) that I wouldn’t get any amine blush. Well, I went out this morning to check things out and the deck is nice and smooth and the deck lap line faded in beautifully and so did the break where the deck patch ended (I floated some extra material there and got a real nice gradual blend. Even the rails have no fish eyes at all. So in one day I was able to get the lion’s share of the board’s shell done. Much of the color irregularities are less noticable but I’m not happy about is the fact that the resin color wouldn’t take evenly on some of the foam. I know – I’m just gonna wax over it anyway but does anybody know why?

I’m posting a few more pictures of the naked foam.

It’ll be a week or so before I’ll have it done so I’ll post some photos of the finished product then.

Good Waves, Rich

3

Rich,

Nice shape. The shadows appear to be falling naturally & nicely around the board at all angles. On an off topic note I took the Luxe for a spin this morning on the new board. I think that fin was made for it. I’m sure you have something specially made for this one already.

4

perfection visits in many forms

beyond the irregularities

the master voice sound

resonates just beyond

the human audible range

por que color

the chroma or the temperature

listen carefully the voice says

to you,“well done”

in the spring of a rain year

a surfin mans thoughts

track the rivermouth

or the walk back

on the sand from privates

sunbathers on the beach at sharks cove

…ambrose…

I had a dog ,his mouth wasnt all pink

it was kinda marbled black and white and pink

damn good dog,named him LasCaux

5

Doesn’t look amateurish to me at all, not at all. So stoked by your photos I took one of my latest fin.

Got a few drops of resin on it doing the plusoneshaper-fin-tab-cant mold, which I haven’t polished out yet. Just hit it with 220 grit and go surf! If you look carefully you can see the RFS box, somewhat smaller than the Futures box I routed it into. Be great if the onshores stopped and I could try it a few more times.

Just an inspired fin maker…learning what I can from Halcyon…

6

Gregg,

Thanks for the kind words mate.

Ambrose,

So poetic; so true.

My question to you

or someone who knows:

The board looks like teak.

In the sunshine she goes.

Now brown hews grow weak

Why do yellow tones grow!

The board ain’t the color it started at all – way way lighter. Oh well, if the cosmos wants another yellow board it’s ok with me. But does anyone know why the board would change color completely in one day of sunlight.

Surprize – Surprize!

Hey blakestah,

Great looking fin! I love the outline!

Got some work done on it today-- rails trued, loop, logo, and lines on, nose and tail reinforcement. Deck’s getting close.

Transforming in ways I would never have expected.

Deck touch up and bottom tomorrow ~

Mahalo, Rich

7

I dont know why ,phyisical science?

red fades llike a mutha

green fades too blue fades likewise

but the yellow stays

yellw yellow yellow

I done it a lot

read the red jar

it has a recipie on it

i oz. to the quart!

when you look

at whatscookin

in the jar while ya mix it

it sure looks cool

enough ta eat

or spread on the fibre glass

but as with what I ve heard with covering fresh friut with a cloth

cover it wih red it rots faster? go figga

basa adds a little opaque to the tint some times do dat stablize it?..

there arecertainly physical properties that can be analyzed down to oscelating light wave spectronomical satisfaction ,damnit where’s the edjumakated guys whenst we reall wanna hear some of that high talkin’ information gleaned from some color theory doctoral thesisicalistic craniumbendersol

where those market guys from penn state?

how about someone from Cornell,or U DUB,or Notre Dame or mebe interupt them Cardinals they could pick a Pope any time

this is why I chose to approach every color job as a running experiment

the Chamileon color the board is now would be interesting with a little opaquetry like some taped off stripes of a zebriac bent or some leopardic spots then hot coat over em ,lighter it wont be

resolute ly color the gloss and love it like my dead and gone beloved Lascaux

what a dog

couldn’t a’ been better if’n he was a blue tick hound

betya fi dallar he 's a goo dog too

had a fifteen pound tail

could wake the dead poundin’ it on a hollow core door

… ambrose…

true color is a falacy as reflected lighi

spectral light[ projected] cast on a reflective surface of the same color is the abscence of the rest o’ the spectrum? gosh those fine art teachers used ta talk to us almost as much as the Physics professors din’t they

and some of the stuff you can remember

how bout havin the dream where you cant remember where your locker is or the combination…Luther Burbank junior high school The Beavers

8

OK, I’ll bite a little piece of this color thing if someone else wll chime in and add some better knowledge. From college physics of light, etc, 101. One of the factors involved in the production and stabilization of colors is the degree, rate, etc. to which a medium, such as a fabric, absorbs or reflects ultraviolet light. That’s my whole enchilada on the subject.

Yellow is a healing color, according to the mystics I have known and loved.

Do you dream in color?

9

Colors are a dogma of seeing to rise above, it’s all in the viewing, join in the dance. - daddio

The cosmos is a mosh pit of Color! - Walt Disney

I read this in '79, and still think it’s a valid art/science easy read.

THE DANCING WU LI MASTERS

Gary Zukav

The fact is that physics is not mathematics. Physics, in essence, is simple wonder at the way things are and a divine (some call it compulsive) interest in how that is so. Stripped of mathematics, physics becomes pure enchantment.' Zukav's widely acclaimed bestseller aims to communicate that enchantment by describing recent developments in advanced physics for those with little or no mathematical or technical knowledge. The author draws comparisons between quantum mechanics, modern psychology, and eastern thought; indeed, the book title is derived from the Chinese ideogram Wu Li’, which carries the meanings patterns of organic energy'; My Way’; nonsense'; I clutch my ideas’ and `enlightenment’. In The Dancing Wu Li Masters, Gary Zukav shows how the new physics embraces all of these concepts, conveying the ideas that have revolutionised modern science with rare directness and clarity.

Nice fin and nice board…

10

Love the fin color, Blakestah.

Truth, beauty, and quark to you, Daddio.

11

Well I’ve got it pretty well done – had to wet sand and polish in the rain this morning but, why not – it was nice and warm – just a little spring shower.

Trace #3, according to what tiktokman says (Yellow is a healing color, according to the mystics I have known and loved.) must be healing. You can almost see the colors working in the attached photos of the tail. I drew the shape a few days before I started on the blank at Fiberglass Santa Cruz and when I finished sketching Ross over at exclaimed, “That’s a Jobson tail!” Little did I know, cause I had never seen a tail like this. From what I gather Wil is the guy that originated the tail design and puts channels on the bottom on some of his boards at least leading into the teeth in the tail outline – at least that’s the best info I have right now.

I didn’t want to camp out in the rain with camera – rather wait and not risk screwing it up. I’ll take some more photos when the weather cooperates.

Tiktokman, “Do you dream in color?”

Rich, “It sure seems like it, at least last night was that way.”

Good Waves, Rich

12

Hey Rich,

Are those the expermental quad fins you mentioned you were working on?

13

Hey Waaahoo,

The “Sharky” template on the board is one of three different fin templates I’m planning on experimenting to start. The other two are “Mentals” and a new one called “Cue.”

The lead and trailing fins on the board in the attachments are around 4.5" and 4.0" respectively. After I surf it some I’ll hope to be able to give a report on which fins work the best in given conditions.

Gonna try and get out on it tomorrow, but a guys gotta work too.

Share the stoke, Rich

14

hey rich …

the drawn out line on this board will give it a drawn down the line feeling , the rail carrying the softer tuck right into the tail should hug a steep face and late drop …

so my suspicions are the fins arent giving enough forward projection at heavy angles of attack …

which leaves the board feeling like its dropping off the face coz it leaves you behind and eventually gravity takes over …

because the rail line is long it doesnt give you any room for last minute adjustments in how your posistioned in the curl , its more of a point and shoot out line , so if you point wrong, the fins dont have enough fine control built in to make any adjustments to your positioning either …

because you have heaps of toe in on your front fins , you have to turn way deeper into a turn before your fins start to pull you into the turn by themselves …

now when your on a steep face your only relying on 2 rail fins to do the work …

automatically you will have angle of attack just by being on a steep face , this is where toe in is critical …

less toe in will mean the front fin will get an angle of attack earlier , as soon as it does get aoa it will pull one way , up into the face , so now you have the confidence that your foils are pulling the tail up into the pocket allow the rider to weight up slightly on the outside rail and project down the line …

to much toe on the fronts and it wont pull the rail/tail into the face , you can still get it to pull but only when you actually lean harder into the turn , but of coarse you wouldnt do that naturally in a steep part of the face , and if you do lean hard enough for the fins to actualy be on the right angle , your rail is not in sync with the direction you really want to go…

so the feeling you then get by trying to compensate for the package is a feeling of the tail droping out …

to give an example , i normally run more toe , in my big wave down south boards , because they stand up as big peaks you seem to drop forever and are nearly always forced into a high speed bottom turn in which to little toe would give the fin to much angle of attack at to great a speed and hence the chance of spinning out in a critical situation at the bottom of tons of lip , the extra toe even creates a little extra drag , but hey at that speed its more about control and hold …

but my big wave up north boards dont have extra toe …

the waves are so down the line you dont even get a chance at a bottom turn , so now your looking for more down the line projection and the ability to hug a steep face without using your rail to hold it , so the fins have less toe so they pull the board up the face but the rail edge is hard so it wants to release , and if i have to load a turn at speed more reduced tail area takes care of that …the type of rail you have is great for those fall out the lip type drops where you want your board to land on the face and not slide once its hit clean face , but in certain fast down the line situations can leave you feeling a bit high like its getting sucked up the face and wont let go until you really point it towards the shore , but thats not really the direction you want to go when your looking at feathering lip 50 meters down the line and double steping coral bombs underneath you …

so in all cases theres a conflict of interest between the toe in , outline and rail set up …

where the board would feel best is when you have plenty of open face to play with , it will still handle late drops and take offs as long as you dont want it to project down the line up high without doing a bottom turn …

reshaping the board is not an option …

if you must keep it a quad , i would reduce the toe on the fronts and make the tails virtually straight and put a centre foil in the tails , it may be possible to reset toe in , in the actual fin bases so you dont have to reset the boxes …

the next option combined with the first is set another box and have a larger centre for those up high down the line style take offs …

and another thing is doing a slightly harder resin edge , the rail isnt really the main problem , it will hold the face but hold it so well that it climbs high and then gravity becomes the final master as it drops out …

the rail is fine for a powerful heavy drop , but the limitations are steep face at slow take off speeds , if you have a decent drop you then get the speed required to make the rail work , but then the fins are letting you down …

so right now a few elements of the theme are missing , you need to give it a clearer theme or direction in one way or another …

first the fins , then the centre box , and finnally the bottom edge if the projection is still not there …

regards

BERT

15

Hey Bert,

This is an awesome performance discussion. You’re tops in my bood mate.

To date the biggest issue has been sliding down the face of the wave sideways probably because the fin set-up wasn’t deep enough along the entry rail line and the board wouldn’t catch in the wave face on the drop.

For the record – I think that photos often make things look much different than they are in reality. The toe in on both rail and trailer fin boxes was set with a straight edge on a line pointed exactly at the tip of the nose of the board. So the trailers are toed in less than the rail fins. The rails toe isn’t that exaggerated to my eye anyway.

The next thing I’m going to do is put bigger more upright with less cant rail fins in and drop C5 boxes in for canards ahead of them – make it a twinzer – surf it without trailers – and see how that goes. Next will be a quad set-up that tightens up the cluster more. I feel the fins need to be more up into the entry of the tail rocker for the board to work well.

I have no doubt the board will end up with a center box in it too but for now I’m going to fool around without a center fin. I may find that I want to make the trailers deeper but somehow that seems like it’d be counterproductive so what I’ll try with the next quad set-up will be holding some cutaway trailers to the front of the fin boxes and put some more upright and deeper rail fins in it starting with the ones I use with the twinzer set-up. In the end a thruster may be the best solution but somehow I doubt it.

As with all things I do I learn by experimentation and my failures teach me how to succeed. Finning this one a fun challenge. Who knows what’s next?!

I don’t think there is any doubt a center fin take care of side slipping down the wave face. I can easily envision the board as a single, but I want to continue the process without a center fin and see if I can make it work. If it goes it’s be a gas! If it doesn’t that’ll be the next step.

Back to the fin shop, Rich

16

theres no doubt you can make it work without a centre …

maybe 10 years back i worked exhaustively with quads for about 18 months , converted the whole team to quads and pursued many variations …

only 2 weeks ago bumped into one of my team guys from that period while on a trip away …

the whole quad thing came up in conversation again …

you got lose some toe on the front , and have none on the rear , the slip will be gone all together , plus youll get way better projection up high …

the set up you have now gives no resistence on the tail fin , so it spins freely without forward projection at attack angles …

it would be like having our tail fin on a thruster angled slightly one way …

it spins on a dime in one direction without drive and then feels real stiff and drivy in the other …

even if you dont change the front toe , the tail fins are essentail …

regards

BERT