Any interest in testing a new design?

I'm having a board built that incorporates some significant deviations from standard surfboard/wakesurfboard design. Including a single rotating fin and asymmetrical outline/rails.

I do NOT have any plans to sell this, but do hope to influence the bigger manufacturers.

I'm looking for 6 folks in total, with varying degrees of skill. It's a relatively small board, so your weight should be below 170 lbs.

Realistically, the board will be ready in 6-8 weeks. I'll provide the boat, wake and boards. You need to bring your wet or dry suit and ability to evaluate. We'll be testing in or around the Sacramento area.

I've sent a few specific invitations, I'm looking for a few more folks.

Thanks, post any interest or questions here.

I'm very interested....

Where are you planning on testing?

Hi Jennifer, that's great! We're thinking New Hogan Reservoir, but that's not settled yet. It will be in the greater Sacramento area.
Once I get everyone's input we'll schedule the day. Arun has also indicated he'd be willing to test with us.

Thanks again and I'll keep you posted as we progress.

Send one to the Texas....we'll give it a go around.

Im down to help you out with testing. I live in the sacramento area also.


Danny Turner
HYPOXIC FILMS
hypoxicfilms.com

We here in Az are more then happy to test out the board...you bring the board and we will buy the booze.

Sound like a plan?

Dills

Danny, we'd be pleased to have you come join us. I remember you and your Phase 5 from Wake Surf Jam. I'll keep you posted on the developments.

This is a quick scan of the rotating fin system (RFS). This isn't the fin that will be used in OUR board, just one for the prototype. If you look closely you can see a cutaway below the fin, that allows the fin to pivot from it's center position to left or right. The force required to move the fin is adjustable.



I could still use one last female regular foot volunteer. Only average skill level is required, I'm not looking for any more experts at this point.

Thanks all.

Jeff - If you can tell me ahead of time, I can be there. I would love to try it.

bsflower, THANKS so much! I'll be able to give you at least 3 weeks notice, will that be sufficient? As it stands we will have six separate boards to test. Three are already completed and three more are in the process of manufacture. I'll be posting pictures of the progress of the boards over the coming weeks. I talked with the shaper just yesterday and everything is still on target, about eight weeks away.

3 weeks is plenty of time. If fact, if you go to alaskaair.com and see a web special from Seattle to the bay area, I can come down then as well.

Can't wait. Should be fun.

This image is the rough cut from the blank. It is the first step in the process.



As you can see from the tail...it's best described as FREAKISHLY BIZARRE. This board is for regular footed riders. The right half (or toeside) of the board has a more standard fish shape with a swallowtail. The left half (or heelside) has a rounded tail. If you think about how you turn on a surf style surfboard, it is EASIER to turn into the wake on your toeside edge. Also, when spinning a 360, the heelside edge of the tail hits the wake and so a more pronounced rounding "hopefully" will allow an easier 360 without catching an edge.

It may turn out to be a total bust, but...I do want to thank you folks for agreeing to test.

bsflower, thanks for your involvement. I really appreciate your making the trip down for the test.

Three images to show the rails of the board. Again this board is assymetrical, so the toeside or right rail is different from the heelside or left rail. The design depicted is for a regular footed rider (left foot forward). This image is of the tail. It gives a view of the toeside rail being significantly "harder" than the heelside.



This next image is from the nose of the board looking back on the heelside edge. You'll see that the rail is very relaxed and rounded. This "hopefully" allows easier backside spins without catching.



The image quality is bad. This is the toeside rail, it's very sharp (and unforgiving) taken looking forward on the board from the tail. It's designed for SHARP, HARD turns into the wake. It grips and generates enough speed for decent airs.

In developing the design for the board described above, we had three unique stages. The first, which I am asking you to test also, is this small red board. To give you a perspective, it stands just 4'6" tall. It has a slight V bottom. It has proven to be extremely fast and edge to edge transitions are SCARY fast. I'd like to direct your attention to the fins. If you look closely you'll see that the toeside edge of the board has the angle or toe-in of the board almost straight. It offers a great deal of floatation, when compared to an epoxy board, but is also much smaller than most shaped foam boards. It still has a goodly amount of rocker which, amazingly enough, allows pop shovit's! Well, if you're skilled enough.

This is the bottom of the board, note the fin on the left side of the image compared to the fin on the right.



Deck of the board. Note, no EVA foam, just a liberal application of wax.

Good news and bad news. The GOOD news is that asymetrical board is done, a picture on the bottom is below:



The BAD news is that on a photo shoot with Jerry of Shred Stixx we ruined one of the prototypes. It's doubtful that I'll be able to get this one replaced before spring. The rope cut through it!



It looks like the 3 remaining boards will be ready for delivery in early January, so we are a bit off schedule.

Finally back on track. The boat is wrecked "still", but hopefully will be ready to hit the water this month. Pictures of the final prototype below.

That looks SICK

Wish you were around my neck of the woods surfdaddy - That looks like an awesome ride. If you ever make it to Houston - look me up.
~S~

Hey Rich & Scott, thanks. The boards have turned out nicely, the aluminum/graphite patch really is sweet. We have one final one with a camo air brushing that looks nice also. If I can ever get the boat back in the water we'll get some action photo's.

When you get to Texas look us up....Here is the 2005 Surf Machine. 23 LSV with a Vortec 8.1 Litre.

Jeff, if your still looking for some people too test out your product I would love to try. I am 6'3" and can ride any board I have ever been on. I am not a stud, but I think I would be able to tell you teh pros and cons of your ride.

I like the looks of it though...but does it ride like the style??

Dills

Jeff that prototype looks killer! Can't wait to give it a run!

Hey Jennifer, Thanks for the kudos, really sorry for the dealy...as SOON as I get the boat out of the shop, we'll schedule a date to hit the lake.

Jeff - I am in the process of planning a trip to NORCAL mid-March. It would be cool, if I could give the board a test run then. If not then, I can always come back down when the boat is ready.

The board looks great. I love the color scheme.

Hey Laci, I'm "hoping" that we will have the boat back, but this Sunday the V-drive went south and we slammed the boat into the ramp! After JUST getting it back! It wasn't pretty. Needs another prop, two skegs, plus the v-drive fixed. I just can't promise at this time, but I'll keep you posted. Send me an email and I give you my cell # to call. Thanks for kind words, James' had one airbrushed with camo flames. Gotta love being 13.

Pictures of the final five prototypes, spec's are below. The one board with the "camo" flames is my son James and more than likely won't be available for testing since we trashed the last one, accidentally.

Winged round tail and square tail:





For comaprison, the Winged square tail with air brushed non-winged square tail:





Last two. Non winged Square and Round tail:

Spec's of the various boards. All have a max width of 20 inches and tail rocker of 5/16 inch.
All but the glossy coat air brushed boards have Future Fins, the Glossy board uses FCS.

Model Length Rocker Toe-in

Square-Winged 4'4" 3 1/2" 1/4"
Round-Winged 4'4" 3 1/2" 1/4"
Square Tail 4'6" 2 1/2" 5/8"
Round Tail 4'5" 2 1/2" 9/16"
Gloss Coat 4'6" 2 1/2" 3/16"

The boards are all ready, all I need is the boat back and we are ready to set a test date!

Jeff,

I still am interested in trying one of those out.

Arun

Hey Arun, you're one my list! I just need to get the boat out of the shop and then I'll set the date. I really appreciate your patience.

Jeff, I grew up in Santa Cruz and have surfed the last 21 years everything from a Fish to longboards. Started wakesurfing last year. If you are still looking for people I would be down.
Board More/Work Less
J$

Hey John, I appreciate the offer. I am WAY behind in actually getting this test scheduled, so if I have some of the original crew that backs out, I'd appreciate being able to count on you. Again, where I'm at is the boat is in the shop with a bent prop, fins and leaking V-Drive seal. It's still under warranty, so hopefully it'll be cleared up soon...but, I have no scheduled completion date.

Thanks again

Jeff

not trying to dump on ur boards but it looks like your designs wouldnt work better than the ones on the market. i am a very serouis ocean surfer and kno all the designs as i am sponsered. i built a 4.6 winged round tail but the wings took the purpose away from the round tail. round tails are made for smooth turns and arched out turns.Basicly more board is in the water so its made to carve better.the wings will make the board "break" away from the turn and be loose. second both tails are so wide that they look like they wouldnt be very sensitivewich means they might be a little slower on your rail to rail transitions and turns and snaps and so forth. the thickness will cause it to be sluggish on turns also.i do in a way like the wide tails because they look very good for small wakes. i just ordered a new RUSTY from my sponser and i ordered it with a wide squash because i live on the little wave east coast. just trying to help on the designs.no offense intended. the wing squash looks real good.tell me if u agree or not.

Hey Elliott, thanks for the input and no offense taken. What we've found is that edge to edge is actually INSANELY quick. The placement of the fins UP from the tail has the greatest impact. We are up at 10 - 11 inches from the tail. Also when you are wakesurfing, the tail is actually out of the water, 99% of the time. What we've done with the tails is to allow foot placement. Air is achieved by an ollie rather than speed down the line...as you know, the pocket is relatively small. What we've found, so far, with the round tail is that the tail doesn't catch on the 360's...but certainly the proof is in the pudding. There are a few pic's of my son on his green winged round tail, fins out of the water, in one of the other forums. At 13, he can pop a full foot off the lip. The extra bouyancy afforded by the tail and this wider platform really seems to make a big difference. I've ridden virtually every board on the market and really feel these are more responsive and faster. I've got a group that have agreed to help test, and those folks will be brutally honest, I'm sure.

Again, thanks so much for your input and I'll let you know how it goes.

was the board looser and more fun with the fins that far up.and what board was the best

Hey Elliott, yeah the boards are all incredibly loose, they are twins also, not a traditional thruster. So we still have drive when you push it HARD, but just a little forward weight and you're able to break the fins loose. Even I can do a butter slide on the spine. We use 3.5 or 4.0 inch Future SB-1 side fins. The depth gives us the drive that I found lacking in some of the other boards on the market with smaller 1 - 1.5 inch fins. Placing them as far forward as we did, as you surmized, allows breaking it loose with relative ease. We had to fiddle with the nose rocker a bit, but the combination really seems sweet. My son preferred the winged roundtail. As I'm sure you have found, the wing just allows him something to pivot on. I, so far, prefer the plain roundtail. Of all the design elements, the tail seems to be have the least impact, and the fin placement and toe-in has the greatest impact on speed and edge-to-edge transitions, as well as, 360's. The less toe-in, the straighter the board goes, hence faster and the HARDER a 360 is. I'm an old fart so the 3's are harder for me, but my son can spin successfully on all of the boards. Thanks again for all your input and I'll keep you posted on what folks tell me.

i have been wanting to make my own for some time and your boards are almost exactly what i had in mind.all my friends were like the wide tails are sucky when they dont know.I imagine they would give more pop.I am thinking of a board around 4'6" about 20"wide and 2.75"thick.i think im gonna do a squash but not quite as squared off as yours.i have a couple questions about how u make your boards. how do u measure the fin placement and how do u install futures.[thats all i ride]and how do u shape the rails?and i was wonderin if u could sho pics of the rocker or at least describe it. last, does the boards have any concave on bottom.

also how much do u weigh and how tall are you[and your son]?im 6' and 144lbs.just curious what boat do u have and how bigs the wake?

Hey Elliott, there are several good videos on shaping and glassing. I think the John Carpenter video is the defacto standard. I also have found at least a few sites on the web that address the subject. You'll have some limitations on rocker and width based on the blank you choose. If you use a clark foam blank, they have a ton of different manufactured rockers. I "think" there is a site called ezfoam.com that has the clark blanks in a pdf file. Most of these boards you see are only about 1.85 - 2.10 thick. I found we just didn't need more than that for the floatation. Futures sells a template for installing the fin boxes. Comes with an aluminum plate and plastic jig that lines the router up for cutting the hole. The jig flips over and does a second deeper cut. Pretty easy once you've done one and I do believe that same site has the instructions online. We experimented with the location and found that 10 - 11 inches up from the tail gave us the response we wanted.

The rails are HARD from the tail all the way to nose. Not hard like on a surfboard, but hard like a right angle at the bottom. SUPER MEGA sharp. Not very forgiving, but you can imagine the responsiveness.

The bottoms are varied. Most are flat under your feet, with an entry V. Two have a slight double concave and one has a slight V from tip to tail. I have found the best performance with the slight V throughout.

Somewhere I've listed the rocker dimensions, and I just stayed with the natural rocker of the blank. The biggest challenge, Elliott, is locating WHERE on the blank you are going to cut your board. If the blank is 5'8", you'll want to cut it such that the natural rocker matches what you've designed.

I think you'll find that JC vid very helpful.

I'm 5'4" and weigh around 165. James is just about 5'0" and weighs in around 125-130. He's a very muscular kid.

WHEN the boat is out of the shop, it's a 2003 Tige 23V. We load it up with about 2,000 pounds of ballast and the wake is HUGE, a bit steep, but we enjoy that for the airs back down into the trough.

Hope that helps and good luck!

i think when i get better i will start to design a bi-directional board with a fin at either side for shuv-its,but i think the front fin would catch and not ride as good. im a very ghetto kid so i strip old boards down and use that for foam.i just sand the nose up for my rocker.i am also condsidering making a concave deck like a wakeskate. this board is for hardcore surfing,not turning and snaps but airs and shuvits.by the way tell james i said he looks like a pro in that pic,and hes only a year younger than me.is he in 7 grade

why are the fins directly up and down jw b/c reg surfboards arem slanted in

Hey Elliott, the fin boxes for the Future Fins are somewhat limited for angling. You route from the bottom surface of the board. It's hard to see, but there is a slight angle out. Plus they toe-in at various amounts (front of the fin is in more than the tail of the fin). We have found that the combination of angle and toe-in gives the best lift, tracking and speed.

James is in 8th grade and won the amateur boys division at the World Wakesurfing Championships. He also won the men's amateur division at WakeSurf Jam 2004. I'll tell you though he looked like a pro.

Thanks again for your input

Jeff:

I live in the Sacramento area. Granite Bay near Folsom Lake. If you need a boat and tester let me know. Just started wakesurfing last sumer so still on the learning curve. I have a Mastercraft Maristar that generates a decent wake.

Thanks
Shawn

Hey Shawn,

Are you serious about the boat? If I don't get the Tige back this week, can I enlist your aid on the boat? If we get the boat back and my original crew bails on me, I'll ask you to help us test.

Thanks a bunch.

Hey Jeff, I just sent an email...I think you will like what I have to say...
Hey arun....comin to boardstock???

Hey Bill,

I'll check my email and thanks for your input.

Jeff

Just thought I'd share this.

http://www.thewalkerproject.com/wakesurf/

Jeff: Are you related to Mike Walker?

Jeff:

Serious about the boat offer. Would need to be at Folsom Lake. Let me know.

Thanks
Shawn

Hey Arun, no - Mike's just a good friend and does the shaping work for me. He's mega-talented with foam and glass.

Hey Shawn, Folsom is no problem, we originally were going to meet at New Hogan. I have a call into Paulsen's and "supposedly" everything is fixed. I'll let you know. Thanks so much for the kind offer. Now, so that I am clear, if I get my boat back, would you be interested in coming along with us to test? That testing would be at New Hogan - about 40 mins south of you.

Hey Jeff, it looks like those boards are glassed in the same manner as surfboards. How has the durability issue been addressed? Do you have an est. MSRP for the boards?

Jeff:

Definately interested in testing as long as I can work it around the kids t-ball schedules... :-)

e-mail me at holidays@surewest.net when you have details

Thanks
Shawn

Hey nuckle, actually these boards, except for the one with the inlay, all have only 1 layer of 4 oz glass. Instead of a normal 2 and 1 on a surfboard. They have incredible flex which allows for a generous pop off the lip, plus they are only a few pounds a piece. The DOWN side is that they will pressure dent if you look at them too long. They aren't designed as general purpose sticks, but as a high performance board.

No MSRP as yet.

Hey Shawn, were are "supposed" to have the boat back by the end of next week. But I'm not holding my breath. We are heading to AZ for the AWA wakesurf challenge on Saturday, will be christening the various boards then. When we get back, I'll let you know what we'll do about the boards and boat. Thanks a BUNCH for your help.

jeff,u kno chad speedy,his mother lives in my nieghborhood. he taught he how to duck dive when i was a little kid.

wait who makes the boards,i went to the webb site it says mike walker,but anyway if u kno chad can u tell me where he lives now bc we havent seen each other in like a yaer.

Hey Elliott...Chad Speedy? I don't think I know him.

James and I did all the development and initial prototypes. If you look at the pictures you'll see the one red board and one green and yellow boards. Those we did in my garage. We then took them to Mike Walker at The Walker Project. He has SurfCAD and can reproduce those or email the spec's anywhere. The one shape you see that has the inlay - is mostly Mike's effort, using what James and I created in the garage as a starting point.

This board rips, check the roostertail that James threw!

Jeff: How was Arizona? Any pics?

Hey Laci, no real pics from AZ. I have 2 but mostly the only part that's interesting is the cactus along the shore! It was fun trip. All of the folks there are nice people. We got the boat back, but it's still running like crap. It's all we could do to pull someone out of the water with the 2k of ballast. We're taking it back for the THIRD TIME to fix the same problem. Sheesh. If want to know where NOT to take your boat to be worked on, I've got that answer!

One last scan - the sequence is a HUGE bottom cut, ollie off the lip and then a 180 in the air which is where I snapped the pic.

The World Wakesurfing Championship is now history. As the old addage goes, the proof is in the pudding. James took first in his age division, and this almost 50 year old took second in the men's amatuer division.

I want to thank everyone that helped test these designs and gave invaluable input during the R&D stages. IMHO, you knew what worked.

James with his trophy.

James with his trophy.