Category: tips & tricks

Been riding the Forty One Two – MkII for a few weeks now, and with the latest run of swell I’ve had a variety of waves to get a ‘feel’ for the board.

So, let’s recap, this boards has all it’s bottom contours straight from the AKU design and machine cut.

I went with a single concave, with double inside, and as you can see from the pic here, the double runs a fair way up the board … it’s not just through the fins, and with that, I feel this is the key element that impacts how this board handles.

It get’s up a goes …

BUT, it has this  tendency to be unsettled when I weight the front foot. FWIW, I am not a goofy …

It ‘feels’ like it “rocks” on the double, and when I look at it, there is a slight ‘keel’ under my front foot … which is what I think I  feel … when it’s got some speed, and I’m surfing off the tail, I can not feel that ‘rocking’ … it’s only when at a lower speed and driving a bottom turn from the front foot, or even just getting set as the wave starts, as I get to my feet and get into the wave … basically, anytime weigh is more front foot.

There is also a lack of “drive” at lower speed, mainly in smaller waves … it feels like the water flow across the bottom of the board is being ‘broken up’ by the double too far up the board, and so the water flow is not hitting the fins as “smoothly” as possible?

Now, the funny thing is that this subtly keel, was totally visible in the AKU design in the 3d render … and when the board was cut, I was tempted to take it out, but I did not want to flatten the rocker too much, nor take out too much volume. I really must learn to go with the feel and intuition.

So, long story short version the board works. It floats, turns, and can be “surfed” … it’s not a keeper, but it’s part of the evolution.

The next one, the mkIII will have slightly lower volumed rails in the med section … tail and nose are fine, just needs a tweak through the mid section, and I’ll take out the ‘double concave’ through the mid section too … volume should come out about the same then …

Oh, yeah, fwiw, the next one will NOT be a ‘lite’ blank … having done all the others from lite blanks, I really do not like the feel … too light in better waves and a bit less “stiff’ so the flex is different. Will be interesting to see how the MkIII in a standard blank goes, with a quality outsourced glassing job.

I’ll keep you posted.

Picked up the new board, the ‘forty one two – mkII’ from the glassing service today.

Maybe I was expecting too much?

Which begs the question … What was I expecting?

Well, to be honest, I thought I would get a ‘showroom’ condition board back. You know the look and feel, just like you find in any surfboard shop … smooth, nice blend of the laps, no cloth showing and no dry spots.

Am I asking too much?

I bit the bullet this morning. After waiting all day for the rain to ease yesterday, I really needed to got into the ‘ozito shed’ to finish the cut blank so I can take it to the glasser tomorrow … after some shed repairs, well, almost …  I’ll post about that separately.

So, I set up the bay and got into finishing the blank.

I started with the ‘dags’ on the nose and tail, then into the finer finishing of the tail. Using the trusty yellow plastic saucer from my gidget’s cubbyhouse, I added the ‘curve’ to the rounded square tail. In the process, the bottom from tail to the 18″ point on both the deck and bottom got a hit.

From there it was onto the fine tuning of the nose, which was again frustrating because the stringer is not centred, and trying to get it looking right becomes a process of chasing my tail. It’s still not perfect, and looks a bit like a micro version of an old 70’s single fin … you know the ones with the thick noses.

I’m really happy with the bottom contours, it’s  single into double concave, and  have basically come straight off the machine cut … other than taking the machine grooves out of the blank, I have not touched them. Actually, for 90% of the blank that’s been all I have done. The rails took a bit of work to get the final curve and shape where I wanted them, and not wanting to make the board too asymmetrical I decided to stick with the base from the machine cut and computer design. I think the rails may need some more tweaking in future versions …

From start to finish … 2 hours!

Then I spent some time checking fin placement measurements, and marking up the points onto the blank … that took another hour, mainly due to my attempt to measure once, mark once (by double and even triple checking as I went along). I ended up going with the rear fin at 3 5/8″ with sides at 11 1/4″ … I have ‘measured’ to set the toe (i.e. rather than the x off the nose line up process) … went with 1/4″ toe.

Then it was time to add the FFW ‘logo” by stencil, which took longer to tape up, set up and wash up than actually doing … 30mins and all done.

As I was waiting for pictures to load for this post I went out and gave the logo a hit with some clear acrylic spray to stop any ‘bleeding’ when it’s glassed. So, all done in just on 3 1/2 hours … I’d hate to be getting paid piece rates, but as far as an easy weekend project goes, it is really not that time consuming.

Picked up the machine cut blank today for the ‘forty one two – mkII’ … it looks and feels refined. Into the ‘ozito bay’ over the weekend for finishing off, a stenciled logo and then off to be glassed next week … Yes, I’m outsourcing the glassing on this one!

The machine cut blank was $110, and the glassing will be $240, so $360 for a new board I designed myself!

Here’s the AKU ‘customer sheet’ for this one:

the ‘forty one two’ – mkII

Oh, yeah, BTW, it also a ‘lite’ blank so we’ll see how it last with a professional glass job.