Hey gang,
Beaks. I like 'em. Anyone prepared to talk/type me through going about shaping them. Any photos of how you cut them in via the rail bands?
cheers
marty
Have seen some really nice looking and more relevant “Beaks”. The old ones mostly were ugly(70’s). Truth is that the average shaper back then didn’t know how to deal with them. Many were afraid to go too thin in the nose and run the risk of breaking off the tip. A few though were able to bring the stringer down and blend the foam to fit. When you consider that most boards shaped in that era were “wide point forward” a beak is just sort of part of the territory. A Beak is one way to get more volume in a shorter board. Problem is; It doesn’t do the surfer/paddler much good. If the thickness is drawn further back into the forward area of the board, a beak is more relevant. Say the head or shoulders area of the board when paddling. In that case you would have a beak that runs 6—12" back from the tip, maintains thickness and blending into the area I mentioned. This would give you more “paddle power”. Although unless dialed in properly you wind up with a front footed board. Brian Bulkley shapes some of the prettiest “Beaks” you’ll ever see. Lowel
There are several variations of the beak nose. The earlier versions tended to be real thick in the nose but the later versions were more refined and reduced that volume by half. You can see some of the fish shapers using this type of foil and beveled rail in their contemporay fishie variants.
One way to do an 80s style beak is to work your deck to the desired thickness and deck rocker @ 4" or so from the nose, then extend your rail line and the bottom half of your rail profile to your desired thickness at the tip. If you work your rails from the bottom up then it will become obvious how much of a bevel it will take to connect the remainder of the rail profile to the deck. You can extend you rail bands to suit. The main thing to be mindful of is that the rail bands are parabolic - wider at the wide spot and narrower at both ends.
That’s the caveman way of doing it (hence its appeal to me). I’m sure some of the pros have more refined ways of doing it, so those might work better for you. Or not.
Don’t lose sight of the point that you might be changing the center of mass when compared to using a high performance foil and deck rocker that ends in the 3/8" tip thickness. Heavy nose thickness is balanced by a heavy tail thickness.
I’m not a real aficionado of the old beak noses, but I’ve done a few. To me it was always just a function of a hard down rail in the very front, in combination with a somewhat pointed nose. Beak nose will result. Fine tune to suit your taste.