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Oh yeah. Finally go my arse into gear and built a light wind board.

Hear it is. The coffin lid

146x45
5mm V lamb bamboo with 600gm triaxle top and bottom with extra slab of triaxle between the binding.
50mm rocker with a sneaky 5mm concave between the footstraps.

Rode it today for the first time 10-15 knots. Its a heavy board but soooooooo light and smooth in the water. It gave me big big grins couple with my 15m speed. cranked upwind like a pro and Sweet pop too.

Best 10-15 knot water session I've had yet. Great fun.

Nice door.
But I don't quite get it, why 5 cm rocker on a LW board. It has better low end with less rocker.
You said you have a concave between straps. My first concave was also just between the straps and it sucked, literaly, when you tried to lift the board by handle flat of the water it produced a vacuum beneath the concave. And it took a lot of force to unstick the board from the water. I had to be realy carefull jumping. If I kept the board to flat, it would just rip it off my feet.
I elongated the concave through the tips.
Any problems with your concave?

zob wrote:Nice door.
But I don't quite get it, why 5 cm rocker on a LW board. It has better low end with less rocker.
You said you have a concave between straps. My first concave was also just between the straps and it sucked, literaly, when you tried to lift the board by handle flat of the water it produced a vacuum beneath the concave. And it took a lot of force to unstick the board from the water. I had to be realy carefull jumping. If I kept the board to flat, it would just rip it off my feet.
I elongated the concave through the tips.
Any problems with your concave?

No problem with the concave it popped out of the water very sweetly.

I am in a wave location. swell, whitewash, waves, chop. lumpy sea even in light wind. A true flat board would just be an horrible in my conditions. I sacrificed some flatness for extra smoothness in the rough. The only flat water I have is in between the white wash. plus I will be riding this board in head to double head wave conditions on occasion. Need some rocker to handle the waves. Again a true flat light wind board would not handle big waves like this.

Also I was expecting a tad more spring back than what I got. So it has a little more than I expected. But in the end it worked very well. It stayed upwind in 10 knots was super smooth through and over the chop and carves real nice.

zob wrote:Nice door.
But I don't quite get it, why 5 cm rocker on a LW board. It has better low end with less rocker.
You said you have a concave between straps. My first concave was also just between the straps and it sucked, literaly, when you tried to lift the board by handle flat of the water it produced a vacuum beneath the concave. And it took a lot of force to unstick the board from the water. I had to be realy carefull jumping. If I kept the board to flat, it would just rip it off my feet.
I elongated the concave through the tips.
Any problems with your concave?

Concave shouldn't go much further than the stance and should be gradual as it fades back to flat. Your board shouldn't be flat when jumping...far from it, if so i think your doing something wrong. In fact your board should never be flat on the water except post landing briefly while heading downwind.

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'Egg-sell-ent!



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Would somebody, in detail, care to explain to me how rocker affects the ride, and also, how concave in the board affects the ride.



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More rocker will ride over and smooth out rough conditions. less rocker will give better upwind performance. But tend to porpice through the chop than rider over it. It can also be more slappy. Also super flat boards require a high rear foot pressure which can be tiring.

So its a trade off of smooth riding and chop management V upwind performance.

If I had a flat water location i would have run a super flat rocker for even better upwind performance.

zob wrote:Nice door.
But I don't quite get it, why 5 cm rocker on a LW board. It has better low end with less rocker.
You said you have a concave between straps. My first concave was also just between the straps and it sucked, literaly, when you tried to lift the board by handle flat of the water it produced a vacuum beneath the concave. And it took a lot of force to unstick the board from the water. I had to be realy carefull jumping. If I kept the board to flat, it would just rip it off my feet.
I elongated the concave through the tips.
Any problems with your concave?

The long concave act like big distributed fins. Concave all the way to tips might make your board difficult to turn.