Egg for my boyfriend - recommendations

[etahaa]

Hello Swaylockians,

first of all I searched the archives and I know there’s tons of information about eggs and I can spend hours reading and researching. But I’m hoping for some personal recommendations on my new project. I’m about to shape my third board and it’s going to be a board for my boyfriend.

He’s about 1,90m/ 6’2 and really slim, weighs around 64 kg/ 141lbs. He’s a carpenter so he works physically but he’s not the super sporty type. I would say he’s an intermediate surfer, but he only gets into the water during our summer in France. So I’m looking for a board with easy paddling, mostly for atlantic beach breaks in France during summer. Lot of small days and not too many powerful waves. He has a 6’4 funboard shape which is pretty thin and narrow so he has a really hard time catching waves. Last year he took softtops in the 7 to 8 range out a couple of times and had a lot of fun. He’s also not into radical performance surfing but likes to surf “longboardy” with feet closer together and more trimming. But he’s a bit intimmidated by the length of an actual longboard. 

I have a 7’8 arctic foam blank. So I’m thinking an eggy shape, wide and with quite some volume for paddling and catching waves closer to the softtop, but better rails to make turns easier. He wants it to be single fin so kind of a retro egg shape?! What do you think how long should I go? I’m thinkting to just keep the rocker of the blank.

I’m thankful for every opinion

Elisa

[SammyA]

6’2" and 141 lbs? Damn, I thought I was skinny.

Retain as much volume as you can in the thickness. I would reduce the entire outline a lot. A sub 8 foot board that’s 24.5 wide is extreme. That 20 inch nose is more like what you’d find on a 10 foot noserider shape. I would go with these widths N 17 W 21.5 T 15.5.

While this is not a true egg, it’s pretty close. It is an 8 foot noserider I had shaped for me a few years ago. I am 5’10" and about 155 lbs. I can kneepaddle it with ease. It floats that well.

Dimensions are N 18 W 22.5 T 15  Thickness is 2-5/8" I am using it as a rough reference to illustrate how your 7’8" blank can be scaled accordingly.

An egg would have a slightly narrower nose.

[doc]

Ummm- coming in on this with a slightly different mindset, so. I’m gonna say the boyfriend is a beginner, ‘intermediate’ would be maybe pushing things some. He had fun on the softies, good. But could he turn the things, do anything useful, or was it just stand, fall off, laugh?  The 6’4" is definitely not the board for him. What is? 

I have a different take on this. See, I used to run a surf shop. And I would get people coming in and asking “Okay, what kind of board should I buy to learn on” - or ‘buy for my kid’. And I’d tell them, don’t buy, rent. Or borrow, or whatever. The board that’s good for your first day or so isn’t the board you want for the next week. That second board ( say, an 8’ softie) you learn from and go to the next one, once you have turns down, position on the wave and more. You also start to develop a style, how you like to surf, be it ‘classic’, ‘performance’, whatever. 

Somebody that buys a board that’s great for the first days, well, you wind up trading it in for the shorter board. If you started off with the shorter board, instead of  a week before you advance past it you have several weeks of floundering and frustration. And if you started off with something that will be good once you get good ( like that 6’4") it just doesn’t work. 

And by the time you have bought and sold the other boards on the way, well, what that cost you paid for the rentals. 

But until then, you don’t want to be buying anything or building anything. You should be exploring boards, trying a bunch of them, seeing what they do and if they fit you…or in this case, the boyfriend. Fit in terms of waves you surf it on ( and yes, those are the same Atlantic summer stuff I get here) , ease of use, comfort. He starts learning about what he likes, what works for him. Then, have at it. 

By analogy- he’s a carpenter. Let’s say you get him a saw. But it was a chain saw, and he does finish carpentry or cabinet work. It might be a really good chain saw, best there is, but he needs something very different. 

hope that’s of use…

doc…

and Sammy, you are skinny. Dammit. These days, I’m not, and it’s ticking me off.

[newschoolblue]

Wow.  How awesome is it that we have a female shaper making a board for her boyfriend?  This is a rare event around these parts.

Not to be disagreeable with the good advice Doc gave, I will say that one of the funnest boards - with some limitations -  that I’ve owned was a 7’6" Doug Haut design made by Surftech.  It had the wide point right around center, about a 15.5" nose, 21.25" mid and 14.75" tail (I just checked my notes).

It had a basic thruster setup, which limited my options to experiment, and it didn’t always fit well into the super tight beachbreaks we get on the Gulf coast.  Also, as Doc said, after a while catching waves and cruising can actually start to get a little boring.  That’s when you want to switch to something a little more manouverable.  But in my opinion  it’s a great type of board to always have handy.

I would suggest keeping it simple.  Simple curves. A light roll or vee in the middle.  If you can include a single fin box in the center, that’s a nice touch.  At least 2 side fin boxes, or even a tight quad, would be good to have to add variety to the ride options.

[lemat]

where do you surf in France. Some place can be realy tricky for beginners and slightly more, fast, hollow and crowded, need to start very fast. A shorter board with compacted volume, low rocker with width and thickness front to start quickly and pull up front of board and lifted lower volume tail to not be propelled too much when put on feet can help in those place (around Capbreton). On other more flatter waves you can go with longer board.

[gdaddy]

If the OP wants to do a singlefin egg on that blank then Sammy’s suggestion (above) is a perfect fit for that.  The slightly narrower nose will work together with the nose rocker in the blank to handle a wider range of conditions.   

As for the surfer progressing, that’s okay.  This type of egg will always have it’s place in a versatile quiver.   Don’t be surprised if you eventually end up adding sidebites later on, though.   I prefer  singlefins for certain conditions but they do have a more limited range than a 2+1 setup.