Coming from Estonia I'm an unlikely wave surfer. I grew up inland, spending my summers in ponds and rivers. Even moving to the coast didn't help, the Baltic Sea simply does not produce surfable waves around here. So my surfing career started quite late in the west coast of UK, paddling into tiny fun waves on huge salmon pink soft top. 3 years later I'm a decent surfer but I've never owned a surfboard made specifically for me.
Surf board sketch
All this gave me an idea to try to crowdsource a CAD model for a board that could possibly see the day of light. Here's the progress so far.
#1. I found a sketch (image above) with initial measurements from Swaylock's surfboard forum.
#2. Up went a request for a surfboard model with as much information as I had.
#3. Luckily gee and Adam Pohl picked up the challenge and produced awesome looking models. Thanks guys! I'm constantly amazed by the willingness of our members to help virtual strangers.
#4. Adam uploaded his model which Indrek and myself further tweaked to end up with a model that I think would be a nice ride for mellow waves. It's a lovely minimal (mini version of the famous super sized Malibu models), single fin, either balsa wood or wood imitation finish board.
This surfboard is a real group effort.
#5. Next step is finding someone who knows both CAD but is also a surfer/shaper and get his opinion on the ridability of this board. Maybe it's awesome, maybe it's rubbish, who knows. Anyone out there with this skill set?
With 0 surfing, 0 shapers and 0 surf shops selling wave surf stuff (all my friends are kitesurfers, we've got plenty of wind) the chances of turning this board into a real one in Estonia are a big fat 0. Initial steps of crowdbuilding this board have been amazing, let's see if I can push it to the logical end and surf this board one day :)
Follow-up: Huckleberry, who's drawings I used as the basis for this exercise had this comment on CAD in surfboard design:
It is amazing what the CAD programs can do. Back in 2001 SurferMag ran an article that said the new generation of master shapers will be computer geeks who won't even know what a Skil 100 is. Surfboards can be designed in 3D and then that information can be plugged into a CNC shaping machine that can produce a shaped board ready to sand and glass. For HWS, the computer can generate cross sections which can be printed out and hand-cut, or CNC cut out as ribs, lots of guys doing it.
