My Second Foray into Fiberglass

I bought this old Dewey Weber DNT Series single-fin off of craigslist for $125. It needed some work as there were some gouges in the rails which turned into deep gouges as I started picking at them, but there wasn't really any signs of major water invasion in any of them, so I figure they must have happened mostly in storage. I fixed them, which was my first attempt at actually fixing dings to look good. I definitely helped having built a board - it gave me such a good understanding of what I was deconstructing and reconstructing.

So the dings came out very nice, but when I tried the board out, a few things happened. The first time the waves were easy, just really gentle faces and not much power to them, it felt too slow - I could feel it holding back. So, I shelved it for that session, went and grabbed my fish, and had a blast. Then I took it out on waist to stomach day, some chest high sets - but really fast rights- a low tide combined with offshore winds and they were just steep peaks peeling down the line. The board spun out big time. So I put it back again. I was just about to give up hope on the board when I thought more about the single fin: it was definitely home-made, and it was really thickly foiled, with a wide base and I think about 7 inches or so. So I figured I'd make a fin for it. So I did...

...and this was the result. It's 8 3/4 (it was supposed to be 9", but I think something happened along the way) with a fairly narrow base, which I forget the measurement of right now, and some nice rake to it, but not too much. To make it I laid up a fin panel with I think about 48 layers of 6 oz. cloth. It was pretty fun, and cheaper than buying a fin. I tried it out on some nice hollow little waves, probably waist high maybe stomach to chest on set, and the fin worked really well. I could control the board when I dropped in on the bottom turn, and it helped me just hook in the pocket and drop back in the barrel, or I could step on the board and it would really fly - it's got a wide, flat bottom with very little tail rocker - and a lot of nose rocker for late take-offs and steep faces.

Here it is, on the bottom of the rack, with the fin installed. I really like this board. It's got an interesting foil to the deck, almost like an s-deck you see on Liddles or the Simmons boards. This board is thick - 3 3/8" - the thickest board I think I've ever ridden, long or short.