I have a board that I don’t really like to ride. It’s not as good of a wave catcher as it seems like it would be, and it feels slow on the wave… anyway, it is delaming on the deck and the tail needs to be repaired from cracks, so I’m already set to repair it and in the process make it look cooler with some color.
I thought maybe I could have some fun and modify the board to make something funky & different just for fun.
It’s 6’4" x 20 1/4" x 2 7/8"
The straight cut would shorten it 9" and the width is 13" at the cut. Fins would be pretty far back, but I’ve ridden mini Simmons with fins VERY far back and it was still enjoyable…
Are these terrible ideas and why? and which cut would you go with? and to be clear, I don’t expect this to be a magic super well performing board, just something different to have some fun with. Also, I have a a good amount of epoxy that needs to be used so I’m not worried about the cost being worth it or not.
Rocker/foil photo. You say not so good for wave catching then slow, seems not an outline problem so may be to much entry rocker curve and… not sure cut tail will improve board but…
thinking about the nose rocker it is fairly large compared to my other small wave boards. I’m going to take some length off the nose, but keep the roundness, then take some off the bottom with the swallow tail & make it a short twin… worst case scenario I make it look sweet and it’ll look nice on the wall.
For a Retro, try to bring the buttcrack to just below the fins trailing edges. Use different fins that will allow you to do that.
What is width at your Retro tail wing tips?
Butt crack depth of a classic Retro is approx. 1/2 board width at wing tips.
A Classic Retro Fish is about 12-13” wide at wing tips.
I’m reading/researching that exact topic right now trying to decide… I’ve been reading a lot of your replies to others over the years, and marking up/measuring my board trying to make decisions before that cutting starts.
this tip helps tremendously as so much math & methods & formulas all at once starts to cause analysis paralysis!
with the big twins I have, close to MR style, the trailing edge goes back just about 1/2" past/below the top of the center fin box – I was thinking the crack would start just above the center fin box as close to it as I can.
Just above the center fin box, it’s 13" wide … with this outline drawn, it’s only 11" wide at the tip of the tail with a 3 3/4" crack
You could pull it back some more.
Using the same formulas for a retro buttcrack, make it more of a hybrid between Retro and swallowtail.
I like the retro/swallow concept better than that square tail which would be really wide.
Try pulling the tip of the buttcrack back about 1.25” - 1.75”.
Try keeping the same wing shape.
That will let you cut more off the nose, getting rid of more of that steep nose rocker and drop the buttcrack below the fin boxes.
this feels like a good line for the cut - so when I cut back some of the glass to shape the deck and reglass, I’ll have just a little bit of foam to shave off to hit the “1/2 the width formula”… ignore the horizontal line, the final wing tips are just above it …
now it’s 10 1/4" width, and the crack goes up 5" which seems close enough for some wiggle room in shaping the deep internals of the buttcrack… we shall see!
ok done - the shape/height is just a result of the template I was using… a fin – but I used a different fin and got it spaced out a little better – thank you for the advice on a slow Sunday –
I’ll share the results in about a month of Sundays…
I played with your photo.
Assuming tip to tip width at wingtips is 10.25" (green line), the blue line is buttcrack depth (5.125"). Top of buttcrack is about 1.89" from black line.
If you lower the the green line to the outside bottom of the H, it should be about 9.78" long.
The red arcs I used are what was available in my graphics program.
You can use whatever arc you like.
From profile photo seems there is lot of entry rocker, that can explain why board is slow, it push water. Shorten tail will not help and could increase problem, shorter tail will be more in water push nose up even more.
Entry rocker is a board key must be suited to need.
