So I’m planning on making a 5’6 groveler board with a twin plus trailer setup, but instead of a swallow I’m making a wide-ish squash tail. Where would you guys recommend I put the twins and the trailer. I’m using glass ons, I surf in Oregon, and I’m replicating the Superbrand Fling outline if that helps.
I think it depends on where you think your rear foot will be. We have one veteran shaper (Greg Griffin) who routinely mounts his twins at 5" and without a trailer because he intends the board to be driven off the back foot like a thruster. The original Mark Richards twins were mounting the fins at 10.5" and 11" forward, but he came up on longboards and had a close stance so he still had plenty of leverage.
I used to use a regular thruster layout with the boxes (3.25" + 11") and never had a problem running a twin +trailer, but you might want to tighten that up a bit for a 5-6 length.
Sorry I’m kinda new to the whole shaping thing so by saying you did a 3.25" + 11" fin setup does that mean you put the trailer 3 inches off the tail and the twins 11 inches off the tail? Thanks
No worries about being new. We get that a lot here. And don’t be shy about asking any other questions.
And yes, I’m referring to the trailing edge of each fin. But like I said, you might want to tighten that cluster up for your shape.
Thanks! How far off the rail should my fins be. My board would be either 20 3/4 " or 21" wide
If I recall correctly, Firewire was running their fin placements in off the rail for their Sweet Potato and its variants - and that was on a short, fat, curvy template.
Plus, you’re running the board as a quad, so your rears can either be mounted at the same position relative to the rail as your fronts or you can run them more inboard, like Rusty and slater and others do with their quads. My point being that different builders do differently with quad placements.
I would say that if you’re already leaning toward some of the TOMO and related design elements then perhaps looking at their placement might be helpful to you.