5’8’’ x 21-ish, only ridden it a couple of times…once I got out of twin fin/fish mode and rode it more like a thruster it really clicked: paddles well (enough), planes and drives well, but loose and rotational, too.
“Tri-Dent”?
“Tri-Flow”?
“Tri-Cycle”?
?
ps, yes, there are some funny kinks in the outline. Believe it not, intentional…
Interesting outline and rails, may I “tri” it???
Well done.
Thanks. I have to say that I was partially inspired by your tri-fins-near the tail pics… That, and something a non-surfing boat designer said about fins, and so on.
The bumps in the outline relate to foot placement. It was a very quick build, shaped and glassed in the same day, so I couldn’t over-analyze it.
More testing is in order.
Man. Stoked to see that–is there gonna be video of that being ridden? I REALLY want to see that being ridden.
Man. Stoked to see that–is there gonna be video of that being ridden? I REALLY want to see that being ridden.
Well, some surf would be useful…and a bit of time…, but I definitely will get some footage, as soon as I can.
Interesting outline and rails, may I “tri” it???
Sure.
Trifecta!!
…something a non-surfing boat designer said about fins…
The bumps in the outline relate to foot placement.
AG, what’s the deal on the two above statements???
Good on ya for namechecking Bill T.
Quote:…something a non-surfing boat designer said about fins…
The bumps in the outline relate to foot placement.
AG, what’s the deal on the two above statements???
Good on ya for namechecking Bill T.
Basically, I wanted a really wide tail, but also to selectively pull out area where I didn’t want width. Sort of a variation of wings or stings. Some intuition about having the “action points” directly relating to foot position, dirtying up the outline and keeping the rocker and bottom surface clean.
There’s a bump at the widepoint- the outline straightens a tad just before, jumps out, and then the curve swings back into the waist, and then it swings out to form another lobe (I actually wanted a wider swallow, but that was the max the blank would allow).
The deck photo shows dark foot-marks right at the lobes, and that the back foot is stationed inside the fin cluster.
A lot of boat hull/surfboard hydrodynamic analogies fall apart past a certain point because, well, they’re different animals, but I latched onto a random comment by a sailboat designer who said that thrusters- to him- didn’t make sense, and that the fin set-up should be reversed. And I’d already been sticking these little single-tab fin(lets) on various boards, to see what effect they had, and it made more sense to move them back behind the main fin (as Bill T. discovered years ago).
Here’s a short (16 sec. just before friend’s video battery died) clip of the, what? X3? in some crumbly beachbreak. It seems to be an all-around fun little board. I’ll try to get some better footage, down the road.
nice work and smooth style bro
regards your fin setup:
this is exactly what i’ve been thinking about.
I’m very interested to hear how it rides. Has this been done before? Bill T?
Wondering if it could be likened to front wheel steering v rear wheel steering (like a fork lift truck). Makes a lot of sense if you view the centre fin as the pivot.
nice one!
Nice little vid, I like the N. Young background music.
Done before, and yes it works very, very well . Don’t just think about it, Do it !!
Remember this one ?
Aloha- Wood_Ogre
Back in the late sixties, my Dad drew up a design for a modern surfboard. It had a planshape similar to a modern shortboard with the wide point near the center and a wider square tail. Looked like a navy ship. He had 2 small skegs at the edges of the tail and one in the normal location.
My brother had it on our bedroom wall for a while before sending it off to a big name shaper, and we never saw it again. The fin placement in these boards remind me of what dad thought would be better than what we had back then.
My brother used small tri-fins on his board for quite a while. The only thing that held back his experiments was that he didn’t have them solidly mounted to the board. He used a double stick type of tape, so he could try different locations. I think it might have made a difference if the fins were on solid and he could have made really hard turns without losing a fin.
I wonder what 3 fins placed in a row would do?
