Hello all,
I haven’t been on here in awhile. Moved to Southeastern WA for a job, now landlocked.
What I’m wondering is if anyone has any experience building wakesurf boards. I’m about 3 hours form the WA coast now so a trip to the coast is something I have to plan ahead.
However, I’m right on the intersection of the Columbia, Snake and Yakima Rivers. There are scores of wakeboats out on the rivers all the time.
So I’m thinking about starting on some wakesurf boards. No one around here is wakesurfing yet. With all the boats on the rivers around here, I only see wakeboarders.
I have been doing some research on Wakesurf shapes and materials. Seems most are built the same way as surfboards, (Stringer, 1.5 - 2.0 eps, glassed, fin set ups, etc.). I know that most have only slight rocker to facilitate speed to stay on the wake behind the boat.
Any tips or past experiences would be appreciated.
Thanks.
I've built a few, mostly compsand'ish. Corecell, Divinycell or Balsa skins over 1 pound EPS. But you're right many use Marko blanks cut down. A really long board would be in the 5'6" range, most are under 5' with 4'6" lengths pretty common. Futures seems to be the fin system of choice and 6/6 x 6 glassing is very common. The vast majority of wakesurfers are "weekenders" and buy stock shapes, they'd need lots of help with customs. The wakeboard manufacturers grab the lion share of sales, but their offerings are usually junk. Wakeboard fins, compression molded 9 pound boards. :) Lake Sammamish is a hotbed of activity, the folks from Inland Surfer are headquartered there, might be worth checking the lake out. Also the NWWSA holds a wakesurf contest there every year, they get folks from all over the USA, Canada and Europe competing.
surfdadcpa,
Thanks for the info. And the lake would definately be worth the trip during comp time. My buddy just bought a nice wakeboat with adjustable trim and he got some fat sacks. So, in exchange for building him a board, he’s going to take me out as often as needed to get my shapes dialed in. He’s excited about it too. Maybe I can get the locals on the river “on the boat” so to speak with wake surfing. Haven’t seen i person here wake surfing yet. And I’m on the river about 3 days a week.
Do you have any info on shapes such as volume, rocker ect.? No ki shop around here even sales wakesurf boards yet, so I have nothing to look at for examples except pictures on forums.
I believe they are thiner and have much less rocker than a surf board. But it looks like the basic build method is pretty similar.
Thanks
You’re correct, thinner, shorter with less rocker. Stretch builds and sells some wakesurf boards and I believe publishes dim’s on his website. I sell under the FlyBoy Wakesurf moniker and the board in the picture above is 20" wide, 4’6" long and 1 7/8" thick. Rockers are usually very flat, tail under 1" is very common and nose under 3.5" is very common. You might check out Lakewakes I believe he publishes dim’s, Mike Walker at the Walker Project I think does also. I don’t know of anyone that uses volume with wakesurf boards. I had Mike Daniel at Coil build us a small coil and he gave me something in Beers once, but I think it was a really small number. Hope that helps!
Hey thanks again.
I’ll check out the sites you mentioned. Just going to experiment with a few different shapes / sizes this end of summer and fall.
Thanks.
And the beers volume measurement sounds like the Akushaper program I’ve used in the past.