Blue Pig's Makaha pintail HWS first ride report

Here's 'Blue Pig's' ride report on his board built to the Power Surfboards Makaha design:




Firstly, thanks to roy for sharing so much detail about his build method, and thanks for all the positive comments (it keeps me going) - the board goes like stink (hopefully stu got some action shots, the benny hat kept the cold out a treat) - paddles really easily, duck dives, and catches waves so easily its unreal. first wave I managed to get to my feet - unbelievable, despite the slop (4' and 4 sec, just played in the white stuff) - the speed of take off really surprised me, just a couple of paddle-strokes and it shifts!!! Awesome acceleration



whether this is the thickness (tis a fat old bus = buoyancy), the shape, the tunnel, whatever I love it. I think it trumps the Mal... its a great beginner board, and very few things beat the feeling of taking a self built board into the sea and standing up on it in waves - awesome



Consequently, its gonna get treated to a roy style marine water filler for a vent, and maybe even a sand and polish in due course



I even managed to carry it to the beach and back, single handed

Tunnel fin/annular wing talk

Hey Roy, It's Rich. I'm a fan of fin lift too. I always semifoil my twinners and like a lot of angle, with the idea to keep the tail snug into the wave at speed. I get the rail-to-rail advantage, so now I'm wondering about that bottom section of a tunnel fin. If that surface is foiled to produce lift, does that not tend to lift the tail out of the water? And what of the cost of that lift in terms of drag? Like I said, I am just curious...

<p>Hey Roy, It's Rich. I needed to test out how posting to a group started by someone else worked from a non-admin perspective. I'm also really curious about those tunnel fins too so figured this was a good opportunity.</p> <p>I'm a fan of fin lift too. I always semifoil my twinners and like a lot of angle, with the idea to keep the tail snug into the wave at speed. I get the rail-to-rail advantage, so now I'm wondering about that bottom section of a tunnel fin. If that surface is foiled to produce lift, does that not tend to lift the tail out of the water? And what of the cost of that lift in terms of drag?</p> <p>Like I said, I am just curious...</p>

Hi Rich, Thanks for the questions Regarding the middle section of the tunnel, it will produce upwards lift no matter how it's foiled, We've had good results with double foiled sections and also with single foiled ( nearly flat on the inside or 'up' side) as well. Because the tunnel is an enclosed system, pressure is more evenly distributed inside the tunnel than it would be with a planar non enclosed wing. For that reason it's easiest ( in my opinion ) to understand and visualise the lift via the Newtonian method, i.e. redirection of water flow and mass, rather than Bernoulli's system of pressure differences, although both systems ultimately give the same answers. Whether or not it lifts the tail out of the water depends upon the angle the fin is set up at. For example If the tunnel fin is set up parallel to the bottom, then it's running at the same angle of attack as the bottom in the fin area. So, one might expect the fin not to lift the bottom upwards. In fact it does lift the bottom though, because of the difference in the lift characteristics of the planing surface of the bottom and the tunnel. The tunnel produces more lift at lower angles of attack than the planing surface in the tail and thus lifts the board in the tail area even when running parallel to the bottom. Adding a positive angle of lift between the tunnel and the surfboard planing surface in the fin area increases the force lifting the board. One might expect that the tunnel, acting as an underwater lifting foil, will just keep on lifting the tail upwards if it generates enough lift to do so, in other words jacking the tail out of the water. What happens in reality is that as the tail lifts slightly, the fore and aft pitch angle of the surfboard changes. . . the surfboard pitches forward. Because the tunnel is fixed to the bottom of the board this automatically lowers the angle of attack of the tunnel. Thus a state of equilibrium is reached where the tail is riding slightly higher than it would be without the tunnel, and the tunnel is taking some of the load. The system ( if adjusted correctly ) becomes self tending. This self tending aspect doesn't completely determine the angle of attack of the surfboard because rider mass can be redistributed to alter the trim of the board. Thus the rider can trim the board nose up and the tunnel and planing surfaces working together will lift the board out of the water, in much the same way as a surfboard usually behaves when trimmed nose up, with some added lift from the tunnel. When trimmed nose up the efffect is not to lift the tail up more than at low angles of trim, what happens is that the whole board is projected forwards and upwards in the direction in which it is pointing. . .. this is because the tunnel and the surfboard tail have a fixed relationship to each other. The self tending aspect is greater on longer and/or heavier boards, but is still there on lighter boards. As far as lift vs drag goes, the tunnel has a better lift/drag ratio than the surfboard planing surface because it is effectively a wing of infinite span. Tunnels also have low induced drag. So, whenever the tunnel does part of the job of producing the necessary lift which is usually done by the planing surface of the board, there is a drag advantage to be had. According to some tunnel analyses tunnels are better at low speeds because they have high surface area, ( skin friction drag due to surafce area predominates at high speed and induced drag at low speed) Such analyses make a couple of misleading assumptions, one is mileading because it doesn't apply to the surfboard application of tunnels and is based on the areonautical assumption that the wing must provide all the necessary lift ( not the case with surfboard fins ), the other is an anomaly in the way annular wing area is measured when comparing lift/drag characteristics with planar wings.. Testing identical boards with and without tunnels it's immediately apparent that the tunnel equipped boards are faster as well as haveing more drive and hold . I'm not claiming that tunnel finned boards will always be the fastest in all situations, as there are other ways of achieving low drag, but they certainly work and are a force to be reckoned with.

Pipeline FP13 challenge update: keeping the record straight

grubster wrote:

I dont think anybody has said Roys board cant be ridden in waves of consequence.

The whole pipeline challenge started precisely because Bill Barnfield said on Swaylocks that none of my boards would ever handle a drop on a North Shore wave, ever. He then proceeded to call me a deluded charlatan for claiming that my FP12 design would be ( my words ) " an exceptionally good board for pipeline " Dozens of other surfers and shapers have backed him up by saying the same things. Bill also sent PM's stating that I am irresponsible for trying to risk the lives of North Shore surfers with such a hopelessly bad board, and that i should get medical help for my ( alleged ) psychological problems.

That's what started it. . . . actually what prompted all that was that I called BS on Bill's statement that the physical forces that govern a wave a pipeline are completely different from those governing other waves. When I suggested that perhaps he meant that they were the same forces as other waves just different in magnitude he said no that they were com[pletely different forces that only pipeline riders understood. When I called BS on that and said that my FP12 would do well there he flipped his lid. . . .. and later had a heart attack. I think he has a frustration/anger problem.

What everybody is waiting to see with Roys board is it out-performing all the other longboards at Pipe,Isnt that what Roys Pipeline callenge was supposed to be all about.

Not exactly.

It was initially about

1) Proving that Bill Barnfield and his supporters are wrong in their claim that none of my boards could make a drop on a North Shore wave.

2) Proving my claim that the FP12 design is an exceptionally good LONGBOARD for pipeline.

I've said repeatedly that if one respected pipeline rider says that it's a great board for pipeline then we have achieved 1) and 2) The board doesn't have to be liked by all pipeline riders, just one well respected one, and we've proved our points.

Given that Garrett has already said that he loves riding the board and given that he's planning to ride 2nd and 3rd reef pipeline when it breaks again, I'd say we are in a good position for some interesting results.

#Baron_Surfboard project part 5: The tunnel fin

Here's the tunnel fin for the #Baron_surfboard taking shape.

Because this tunnel fin setup also has a planar fin in the form of a bulb tipped flex fin, it won't have to handle high angles of attack, so we are able to use a very thin fin for low drag, just as we did with the original D 11-9 prototype shown below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ6M9GY1XC0

The tunnel is only 6mm thick, and has a chord ratio of 6% which is very low.

Because the tunnel is so thin we are making it from 22 layers of thick brown paper and resin, it's the same paper which we use for drawing plans. Paper and resin is a sort of low tech carbon fibre laminate and is immensely strong.

The tunnel mould is a piece of plumbing pipe of 200mm diameter, we,e added some poster pint to tint the glue lines

The Eddie Aikau contest

INVITEES
Andy Irons, Hawaii
Brian Keaulana, Hawaii
Brock Little, Hawaii
Bruce Irons, Hawaii
Carlos Burle, Brazil
Clyde Aikau, Hawaii
Darryl Virostko, California
Greg Long, California
Jamie O’Brien, Hawaii
Jamie Sterling, Hawaii
Kelly Slater, Florida
Keone Downing, Hawaii
Makuakai Rothman, Hawaii
Mark Healey, Hawaii
Michael Ho, Hawaii
Noah Johnson, Hawaii
Peter Mel, California
Reef McIntosh, Hawaii
Ross Clarke-Jones, Australia
Rusty Keaulana, Hawaii
Shane Dorian, Hawaii
Sunny Garcia, Hawaii
Titus Kinimaka, Hawaii
Tom Carroll, Australia
Grant “Twiggy” Baker, South Africa
Ibon Amatriain, Euskadi
Ramon Navarro, Chile
Takayuki Wakita, Japan

ALTERNATES
Kala Alexander, Hawaii – Aikau Family Pick
Pancho Sullivan, Hawaii
Garrett McNamara, Hawaii
Kohl Christensen, Hawaii
Dave Wassel, Hawaii
Keoni Watson, Hawaii
Nathan Fletcher, Hawaii
Ian Walsh, Hawaii
Danny Fuller, Hawaii
Kalani Chapman, Hawaii
Taylor Knox, California
Chava Greenlee, Hawaii
Jamie Mitchell, Australia
Myles Padaca, Hawaii
Tony Moniz, Hawaii
Darrick Doerner, Hawaii
Ken “Skin Dog” Collins, California
Ross Williams, Hawaii
Derek Ho, Hawaii
Paul Paterson, Australia
Anthony Tashnick, California
Koby Abberton, Australia
Laurent Pujol, France
Laurie Towner, Australia

We're hoping that Garrett will get to surf and will ride the 13 footer !

Squalyboy's Makaka 9 footer ride report

" Now for a proper ride report!
Well, almost anyway...

Keep in mind that I'm not the best surfer so I'm only able to comment on how well the board handles me.
I'm not quite qualified to test the abilities of the board.

So with all proper disclaimers aside;
I managed to get out yesterday afternoon while we still had the last remnants of some really nice surf. I missed the best part of the day and by the time I got out the waves were getting a bit flat and mushy. Between sets the ocean was like glass.

The first thing I noticed is that in spite of the size and buoyancy of this board it duck dives nicely.

Actually the very first thing I noticed is that the board is heavy as hell to carry but we've covered that already.

Next thing is that once I got past the breakers and in to paddling mode the board paddles extremely well.
I was scooting around to position myself in the waves with very little effort.

I also notice that the board accelerates almost freakishly.



One or two hard paddles to overcome inertia and after that it’s all acceleration.
I had to be careful not to outrun the wave.

I'm used to paddling for my life and having the wave pass me by anyway.
With this board, after those fist two or three pumps I'm off and running and it’s just a matter of matching my speed to the wave.

Another thing I notice is that the board handles very well on a late takeoff. There was one wave where I was about to go over the falls. I instinctively went to bail out but before I did I noticed that the board was taking me into the wave. I was expecting the nose to dip under and launch me into a death tumble with my board but it never did. The nose stayed up and instead I held on and got a pretty nice belly ride. Had I not panicked I could easily have ridden that wave.

So the net result is if I'm in good position I have plenty of acceleration for an early takeoff. If I’m in bad position I can practically let the wave break on my back and still come out riding.

The shape of the board takes a small amount of adjustment to my normal style of riding.
I’m used to standing a bit further back and having a lot of board out in front of me.

With this board, in these mushy waves at least, if you stand too far back it gets a bit squirrely. If you find the sweet spot a little further up on the board though it’s very stable. Like standing on a deck and yet still easy to turn.
I imagine that if I was a better surfer I could take advantage of that "squirrelyness" and translate it into some very responsive turns.

Roy had mentioned something about pumping the board get more speed out of it. I didn’t get a chance to try that. In fact I forgot all about it until I was on the way home. I almost turned back but it was getting late and I was pretty much frozen to the core by then.
Even without pumping this was easily the fastest board I’ve ever ridden.

So to summarize I am in LOVE with this board!

It seems to have all the best qualities of both a short board and a long board.
It handles the beach break like a short board but has all the paddling and wave catching ability of a long board.




I’ll just have to get back into the gym so I can carry the damn thing to and from the car without wheezing like the old bastard that I am.

Oh and man does this thing attract attention!

Don’t build one of these if you’re shy about answering endless questions.
“Wow, where did you get THAT thing!” “Nice board, how does she ride?” What kind of fin setup is that?” “Is that an antique?” “Isn’t the point supposed to be in the front?”… "


.

The Baron 12 foot wooden surfboard project 4

Finishing off the first internal panel: the tail with fin blocking. This panel will be under the deck so it doesn't need blocking for the tunnel fin. The blocking for the main fin goes right through from bottom to deck, but the tunnel fin only needs to be set in a 1/4 inch as it is such a stable shape, so we only put one layer of blocking in.

The nose

The next day, removing the panel



Relaxing in the moaning chair

Power surfboard logos and the Dragonboard logo

We are not usually into obvious logos and are more interested in the board itself.

Consequently these days we prefer them to be unobtrusive, often I forget to put our stamp on the tail

Also there's little danger of my boards being mistaken for anyone else's :wink:

Here's one from 1997



A smaller more recent version:





And how it appears on the hollows. . . just like a watermark or hallmark.

The fine print says:

Power Surfboards
Mount Maunganui
New Zealand




There's also the original Dragon logo for the 13'9" Dragonboard, this one's on the 2001 redwood prototype.






The Dragon is done with resin and metallic 'pearl' pigment, using a mask. It took about 10 hours at least, our workshop at the time was a wrecked shell of a 1959 bus covered with corrugated iron to keep the weather out, it was the old 'Radio 1XX beach bus, and was parked at our camp at the 'gorse patch' a 20 acre industrial section which we lived on in buses rent free for 5 years . It was a great spot only 300 metres from an excellent beachbreak at Omanu, and we were surrounded by all sorts of fascinating industry, including two boatbuilders, one project was being overseen by the designer Derek Kelsall ( a famous British catamaran designer ) and we had some interesting conversations about hydrofoils with him. Arch over at Nautic marine was always generous with Western Red Cedar and pithy advice, then there were all the hotrodders and their workshops. . . a great community !



Here's the tribal dragon on the 2005 redwood/pine model, done using a mask again.

wing in the wave, wing in the wind | By Roy Stewart | Category: Sports & Adventure | Blurb

wing in the wave, wing in the wind | By Roy Stewart | Category: Sports & Adventure | Blurb

Welcome to the 2010 olo board collection.

Enjoy the beauty and philosophy of the Rolls Royce of surfboards. Inspiring images from the past decade of olosurfer wooden surfboard design innovation and waveriding are presented with thought provoking hydrodynamica.
A visual and intellectual feast which celebrates a return to this oceanic Sport of Kings.

Surf industry confusion: Rocker measurement

Still after many years no one has taken the very simple and often published point of ours that rocker is never defined in the surf industry ( except in our camp it seems ) by actual rates of curvature. Rates of curvature are the only way to compare rocker on boards of different length. Failure to do this has kept longboard design in the dark ages in my opinion, and has led to much misinformation being spread about on the subject of longboard rocker.

In particular it has led to dysfunctionally low rates of bottom curve being used on long boards, a problem which is particularly evident in boards of 12 feet and over in length.

The point can be illustrated by examples where a very long board with what appears to be a large rocker measurement can actually have a much lower rate of rocker curve than a shortboard with smaller overall rocker measurement. Low rates of rocker lead to large overall rocker measurements when extrapolated over longer lengths, but they remain lower rates of curvature ! It's really a fundamentally important concept to grasp, and it is a necessary tool for clear discussion and comparison of rocker curves.

'Flatter than your fish'

This board has a lower rate of curvature than the vast majority of 'flat rockered' fish boards:

Downrail and uprail terminolgy can be misleading

Discussion of downrails nearly always winds up focusing on the part of the rail below the turn, and usually does so without any reference to the actual radius of the rail below the turn.

Focusing on the lower part of the rail is to be expected of course because the part of the rail below the turn is what does most of the work, but in reality the radius is not entirely dependent upon whether or not the rail is 'down' 'up' or 50/50.

Thus statements like " Downrails are faster than 50/50 rails is meaningless unless surfboard thickness is taken into account.

Here's a drawing which illustrates what I mean:

Parallel profile surfboard construction frame width.

Answer to a question regarding the use of 3mm wide frames in the parallel profile surfboard construction system:

3mm or 4mm is thinner than I'd use unless the frame junctions are tied with vertical struts, as it will reduce the glue contact area at the frame junctions by 80 to 90 percent compared with 10mm frames. Three millimetre frames won't provide sufficient glue contact area with the bottom panel either, unless one doubles the number of frames, but then the problem will be that even a slight 3mm 'creep' of the bottom panel during laminating will remove all the glue from the frames thus ruining the structure. With 10mm frames or 6mm frames there's sufficient margin that the panel can move a bit.

People often assume that the parallel profile system can be 'improved' and of course tweaks and changes do occur all the time, but there is a reason for every aspect of our parallel profile designs, nothing is there arbitrarily. Changes shold ideally only be made once one understands the system completely, and there's a lot more to understanding it than most people suppose. It might look simple, but all the components are organically interrelated.


So to sum up if you want to use 3mm frames then 'peg' the frame junctions with vertical struts, fillet the first frame panel on to the deck ( or the bottom if using a female mould) and apply a wide band of glue to the last panel to go on so that the panel can creep a bit without making the joint dry.

If using dense timber and wanting to keep the mass low, the rail blocks should be beveled in cross section to conform more closely to the rail shape, the rail blocks must have at least half an inch or 12mm of contact ( across the blocks ) but that leaves some room for reduction compared with unbeveled blocks with an inch or more of contact in the middle glue joint.

We are fortunate having paulownia as more often than not we increase the scantlings beyond the minimum required in order to give the boards sufficient mass, the resolute salmon 12 footer built recently is an example. Using our standard medium construction the board would have weighed 25 pounds, but this would have reduced drive and control too much compared with the original 50 pounder so we beefed the construction up to get a weight of 37 pounds.

The Baron project 3

Here the mid section of the panel which was glued yesterday is ready for the nose components and most of the tail. The tail will be done in two sessions to avoid creep.

Mixing 100mls of resin at a time, about 700 to 800mls are required for the entire panel

Resin is spread on to both sides of each block, rather than on to the frames. No marking is needed this way. If glue is applied to the frames they need to be marked to show where it should be applied, which is tedious.

Glue is squeezed out gently, with a see saw motion.


The Baron 12 foot power surfboard may well be described as the Rolls Royce of luxury expensive wave riding craft !

To be continued . . .. . .

The Baron 12 footer project 2

Internal frame panel #1 this one will support the deck

After laying out the blocks and frames for the middle section of the panel, we secure the frame and blocks at one end of the section we are about to glue together, and then pull the rest of the components back a little bit to allow enough room to work.

The ends of the panel have not yet been made, Gluing tends to make the panel creep in length, so it's best to make the middle of the panel first and then add the ends afterwards.



Gluing commences, using epoxy resin and paulownia sanding dust


Sheet plastic keeps the bricks which hold everything in place from bonding to the wood


The nose is added

. . . and now the tail

Boatbuilding on Great Barrier Island

. . . continued from surf.co.nz

http://surf.co.nz/forum/surfing-chat/203/


Riding old singlefins again was good but didn't satisfy the urge to create, so we moved ahead with our original Great Barrier plan which was to build a scow for our own transport. We had with us a large library of books including " The Scows and scowmen of Auckland " and a host of boatbuilding manuals. These were read late into the night by candlelight. Our budget was limited, so we took Ralph Sewell's advice that " There's nothing like a bit of good clean pine for boatbuilding " and started stockpiling Kaitoke pine, this was being milled By Bruce Marx and the Haszard Brothers who lived on the other side of the Kaitoke Creek.

Peter and Buster Haszard were a couple of classic old engineers, a gay couple who had taken refuge from the prying public in the Kaitoke forest. The had piles of old machinery scattered through the pine trees and tea tree on their property, they owned the sawmill. Bruce Marx the Biker lived in a housetruck with his wife Robyn and two children on an acre of creek front property. Bruce operated the mill.

Kaitoke had great towering pine trees which were over 70 years old. The trunks were perfectly straight and clear for up to 30 metres or more. The wood itself was very hard, and of far superior quality to plantation grown pine. Once a week we'd head over to the mill and select the best pieces.