First Kneeboard

[PES78]

Hey Everyone,

Looking for some advice on a board. I'll be shaping it myself and was thinking 6'0 23-24 wide and 3.25-3.38. It's gonna be an 2.2EPS blank with 6 bottom6x6 deck possibly s-cloth. What bottom contours you guys going with on your boards? Looks like in pictures and what I've read the boards have good outline curve in them and fin placement varies depending on the style of riding you do. I went to Bird's surf shed to look at some boards there and they were old style lis fish boards. Went to the frog house and checked out the Romonasky's out there and fin set up was more forward.

Thanks,

Paul

[Lefty]

i'll just fill in time till the real shapers get in here and have a word...

bottoms -- single concave into double, v tail. by the way, what the hell is a spiral v?

as for fin placement...i'm a big believer in going with your local product. there's a reason it was succesful. you're from san diego, so make a lis-style fish, fins back. i'm from sydney, so it's a thruster for me, with fins pulled forward.

[PES78]

Lefty thanks for the response. Today I'm going to the contest at Seaside and see what people are riding. Maybe I'll do a build thread of my board I shape.

[slucepan]

The Lis fish would be a good board to start shaping on. Just troll the swaylocs site someone has a link to a vintage surfboard shaping manual with the original Steven Lis fish measurements plus more discussions on how to shape a fish than you could shake a bar of wax at. Modern knee boards have the fins tucked more forward under where your ankles are for a more upright position where as the twin keel Lis fish was back further towards the pins. Hawaiian knee boarders like theres pushed back a little bit due to steeper wave faces. I have a bunch of knee board pdf templates and the boardcad .bcd files for anybody that would like them. feel free to use them make changes to suit your needsand or critique them and or generally give your input on design ideas. Shoot me an E mail and I will send you the zip archive file. slucepan***@cox.net*** Remove asterisks for address.

[PES78]

Thanks for the input guys. Looked at a few boards at the contest on Saturday and there was some good looking boards there. Going try some boards on Saturday hopefully to get a feel for riding something completely different. My blank is in so I'm going to work on the outline this week and after Saturday's test drive think about what I'm going to do as far as bottom and fins and placement. I'm really thinking of keeping it simple with flat bottom and some vee in the tail and most likely a quad. Thanks for letting me pick your brains a bit at the contest.

[Joel5150Photo]

javascript:emoticon(':D')yOOOOOO!! joel5150 here, the frog house in newport beach #ach ca.has a wide assortment of romanosky kneeboards, a 6-0 round pin quad fin is an example of romo's best effort, channels soft knee pad,gloss and ploish for added life (and it looks super cool my last 6-0 quad fish pure white gloss and polish looked like somthing from N.A.S.A !!!!!!)fcs boxes hes in santa anna ca, ca his # is (714)368-0749, call for appt. after checking website on ksusa site,map quest location and BE ON TIME !!!!if you wanna takl call me (858)775-5511 joel 5150photo.romanosky knee-boards ...RULE !!!

[PES78]

Thanks Joel, I actually was up there a couple weeks ago and was checking his boards out. Great craftmanship, ever since I shaped my first board I gained such respect for what the board builders do. I started my board tonight and the dims look to be 6'0 23" 3.25". 18.5" tail 17 nose", I took some pics and with try and post them tonight or this weekend. Next up will be foiling and putting in my bottom on Sunday.

[PES78]

So I finished up my board on Sunday, final dims are 6'0 23" and 3.25" with pretty full rails. Flat bottom with v starting at 22" inches from the tail. V is about a 1/4 inch deep at the rails compared to the stringer. Fins, fronts are 17" and rears are 11" and I went with 5 Future boxes. Nose rocker is 4.5" and tail rocker is 1.5" with a hard edge about 24" from the tail. Went with double 6 oz. deck and 6 oz. bottom. I posted some pics in the boards section. I'm pretty happy with how this came out since my other boards I have done haven't come out as well as I hoped. Anyway thanks everyone for the feedback and welcoming me into the kneelo world. Big thanks to Craig for letting me try some boards and without that I wouldn't have known if I was heading in the right direction with this build. Plan on surfing this exclusively once I get it from the glasser. And if you made it this far into this post thanks for getting this far.

[KEL]

pretty cool, thanks for sharing your journey!!!!

[PES78]

Thanks Kel, It's been quite the journey the last year. My first board turned out good because I had help. 2-7 had varies issues but now I feel I figured somethings out. If anyone is ever going to shape a board here are three things to help. Take your time, make sure outline is good, and when doing your rail bands take your time with those. Rails are the hardest to do and most important.

[Lefty]

how's it riding?

[PES78]

I haven't picked it up yet. I'm on vacation right now and will most likely take it out this weekend. Before I left it just needed a hot coat on the bottom and sanding. Once I get few sessions on it will let you know how it goes.

[PES78]

Well I've had this board out a few times now and here's what I got so far. I need more volume. This is the shortest board I've had and I think I tried to fit the volume that I would ride on one of my stand up boards into this one. The rails are pretty full to help with having enough volume in such a short package. The board paddles good but not good enough for me. So I'm thinking of going to 24" wide and 3.5" thick on my next one. Also looking to glass it heavier with triple 6 deck and double 6 bottom. Have a blank on order and will most likely start it this week. I think many people run into problems dialing in their dims and this being my first I should have been thinking of adding volume in relation to the size of boards I was used to.

[micko]

Seems like plenty of volume to me, I'm 6ft, 200+lb and my favourite board at present is 5'7" x 22.5" x 2.5" and it floats me fine. Ideally when sitting on your board the water level should be around your navel.

Maybe you need to look at bottom contours too, I ride a fairly deep single into double concave and flat out the tail, and I'm sure these boards paddle better than my old boards. I reckon the concaves assist with water flow.

[Lefty]

..... Ideally when sitting on your board the water level should be around your navel....

bugger! i've been overvolumed my whole life. i just thought those stand-ups, sinking in the water, were always undervolumed. oh well, too late to change now.