I lucked out and picked up a 9’6" soft top for $100. And after a few sessions trying various fins, I realized that what I have is a board that catches waves well, but it doesn’t surf the way I like.
The board had belly throughout the entire length and 50/50ish soft rails.
It’s a well constructed board that has pretty much no performance features. But it does have ample tail rocker, so I made the decision to go to work on it.
I removed the spongy foam that wrapped the rails on about the back 2’ and bulit up the bottom using epoxy and microbaloons, to make performance hard/down rails, and that changed the belly in the back to V. Added some twinzer fins and…
I have had it out a few times and I’m beginning to get it figured out.
It’s like driving a souped up school bus with a suspension and engine performance package.
You can do everything in the book to it, but it’s still a school bus.
But it carves - Very nicely
Which is something it didn’t do at all before the treatment.
Very nice fast carving rail to rail carving turns and good speed out of top turns as well.
Kind of refreshing to see someone use the term “soft top” correctly, as this is a true soft top. I don’t know how or why people began misusing the term for regular style soft boards like BZ, Wavestorm, Catchsurf, etc. But when you have salespeople in surf shops who talk about “epoxy vs fiberglass” boards there’s no surprises when they get other stuff wrong.
The soft top was introduced by Surftech as a compromise between a soft board and their standard line of mass produced popouts. A bit more beginner friendly than a hard shell board.
I admire your inventiveness in increasing the performance of a really generic design.
Thanks for the positive input. If there’s anyone else out here who’d be interested in getting better performance out of a Surftech/Softtop I’ll share info.
This board is 9’6" x 23" x 3-14" thick and I weigh 145 with my suiit off, so a larger guy will have different results.
I have to get used to making sure my feet are placed in the right place to make it work, so it’s necessary me to dance around to get it right.
But the back with Vee in it and hard rails with Twinzer sets makes the back 2.5 ft very responsive and then as I trransition my weight forward it becomes a tanker.
I may add some concaves ahead of the fin cluster to give it the ability to transition more cleanly. Buy that’s yet to be decided.
This board is going to spoil me, making it difficult to switch back to a smaller board
I’d like to see more pics of the build, if you have them. What was the weight difference? Is there any more soft top on the top? You built up the bottom with epoxy and microballoons, did you also use cloth?
I learned some things doing this. When i was cutting the foam using a router, I kept hitting little pieces of wire. I thought at first that the foam was wire reinforced, but it ended up that they staple a couple of different types of fabric to the foam blank in addition to fiberglass cloth, before vacuum bagging it.
These boards are amazingly light for as strong as they are. It added some weight, of course but all of the weight is at the tail so it’s not as bad as if it were further forward.
Microbaloons + cabosil + epoxy is a pretty light / easy to sand / strong filler. But I did cover the sanded rails with a 6 oz + 4oz layer of cloth and ended up sanding into the 4oz top layer in the process of feathering it in.
It also has a kevlar / epoxy tail block which I added to repair a damaged tail. That stuff is as heavy as rock and more durable.
The pics show the transition of the bottom /rails from soft / belly to hard, tucked / vee
I like the performance of Twinzers with vee.
A lot of guys view vee as being a mediochre bottom design, but twinzers take advantage of the snappy rail to rail transition to generate speed out of turns.
Repaired a lot of those boards in bygone years for surf schools on Maui. Always surprises people that they have staples in them. They will snap and very often completely in half. Put quite a few of them back together as though it never happened. The easy way to finish them off is to spray can a coat of white primer, a coat of white paint and a final clear. Makes them look like new.
I was fairly amazed. I am not an accomplished longboarder, so for myself, walking the deck is a new thing, but I’m starting to get the hang of it.
Something that was of concern was whether it would hold in when I step to the nose.
I was blown away that not only does it hold in, but on a good wave I caught and tried noseriding… I stepped to the front and decided to drop down the face a bit.
I pushed it down rather agressively and to my surprise, The board actually performs rail to rail carves while I’m standing on the nose!
I would never have considered that to even be possible.
But it very positively goes rail to rail standing about 18" from the nose.
But there’s something that i was expecting, and am discovering needs to be worked out as the waves are bigger now.
And that is the transition where the hard rails in the rear blend into the soft tucked rail of the rest of the board . When I looked at it, I knew it would make a funny spot and its squirrely when that section of the rail is engaged, especially on critical waves
