Lake Dagger - 6'7" x 19" x 2 5/8" - EPS/Epoxy - Stringerless

A Post!..?

colours and textures

We know, we know - very little posting has been happening for the last few months and we apologize.

But we have been working on some really different and unique shapes over that time - building, testing and refining designs to better taylor the growing population of progressive surfers on the lakes.

The Lake Dagger - 6'7" x 19" x 2 5/8"

Stringleress thruster with parabolic rails and diamond shaped deck patch. Boxy, fifty-fifty rails provide stability and a bit of forgiveness while on rail. Standard squash tail short board the Dagger' shares similar dimensions to a traditional "big guy s/b". The wide point is just shy of centre promoting back foot surfing and quick turns.

6'7" x 19" x 2 5/8" - Lake Dagger

fresh wax fresh whip

FCS fusion fin boxes | "FIVE" tint

The idea of having a stringerless board is to focus energy on the loading rail while driving through a turn. Then releasing the energy stored in the stiffer rails to ad drive and liveliness to your surfing. This all equates to a light and semi-disposable surfboard that's got "pop!"

crowned deck & progressive rocker

50-50 rails, keep em' boxy

A crowned deck and narrow nose are indicative of a smaller ocean chip' type boards. To offset this, The Dagger' has lower rocker throughout the length of the board. Allowing the surfer to swim and plane faster in the mushier waves typical of our beachys'.

tail blocks

Yellow | Puke Green | Black with Grey tints make the wetout artwork; All done free hand by the glasser' while the resin is "kicking off" (a workable time frame of about 20 minutes)

hotcoats look the best

The board is a personal board and one for the testing grounds. The few surfs on it have been very helpful in gaining insight to how this smaller dimensioned board rides in the smaller surf. We will be building more of these types of boards in the near future and will taylor them even further for a handful of trusty waves arounds the lakes.

keynote features;

• 2LB EPS | Epoxy resin
• 3m-mb sealed blank
• 6 | 6* | 4oz deck
• 6 | 4oz base
• FCS Fusion fin box (with 6oz patches)
• parabolic rails
• yellow | puke green | black with grey tints make the wet-out artwork
• wet sanded to 1000 and polish with acid free wool rag
• 6oz patch layered into leash plug

*note: The one layer of 6oz  deck glass is a diamond shaped deck patch, to encourage flex while maintaining stability.

new equipment. new boards. more updates.

Wombat is done and tested
Sweet P is done
Lake Dagger is done
new CI Gravy copy is shaped

surform.

Composite Fins - The beautiful world of ultra light and ultra strong

The discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were better than was previously possible. Tools, weapons, armor, and various building materials, like decorative tiles, made of bronze were harder and more durable than their stone and copper ("Chalcolithic") predecessors. - Thanks Wikipedia

So, what does bronze have to do with surfboards?

Since the surfboard trade has two main production facets; industry production lines and the backyard shaper, a stark contrast can be aligned with the discovery and subsequent use of bronze in antiquity versus the use of composite materials in surfboard building today. Especially when examining the "backyard" shaper.

Bronze (an alloy of copper and tin) completely changed how the known Aegean world (approx 1750BCE) would live. Think "Brad Pitt" and "Troy" and "Mycenae"; Bronze allowed humans to build weapons, armor, fountains, sea fearing ships (the trireme), oars, tools and just about anything else that would require: a corrosion resistant, flexible and durable metal cladding or core.

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Welcome to the world of "composites"; I shall use the term inclusively to refer to a mix of:

PVC rigid foam, EPS foam, Wood, Honeycomb plastic or just about any other workable substrate
+
Fiberglass, Carbon Fibre, Kevlar, Wood laminate
+
Epoxy
= a composite super material.

Any combination of these materials will yield a wide variety of strength (tensile and mechanical), flex and energy harness and release.

Currently, the Five lab has been playing with a multitude of variations in fin design. Unlike, the large companies composites, our fins are made one by one, hand shaped and glassed using a vacuum bag to ensure a superior mechanical bond.

Here are a couple fin sets in production right now;

FCS - K-2 Keels - 6/4oz + epoxy - light sand and ready for design and hotcoat

FCS - K-2 Keels - 6/6/4oz + red/blk resin swirl - ready for trimming and vac bag

Future - Quad Controller - New pair-a' shoes for The Wombat

(from L to R) Future K2 Keels, Future MR Twins, Future Controller quads
(sorry for the blurry pic)

Not pictured: Future Kelly K-3 thurster, Future production quad, FCS K2 Keels, Future Stretch Quad, Future Rasta Keels.

We are hard working on some real numbers for Strength to Weight ratio of these fins. With the few tests completed thus far; none of the fins have broken...not even a single FCS tab!

Stay tuned.
Nev

5' 10" Sweet P - Gets new bottom rails

"Surfboards are as disposable as Dixi cups"

With a slow last week of surf, the Five Lab has been pumping out work;

Fins, glass jobs, pie shaped tail rebuilds, blank building and a whole slew of repairs on a wide variety of boards. Its always interesting to reverse engineer a surfboard. Envision its first stages as a production blank, the first passes with the planer, to the careful examination of the complicated contour lines all blending together seamlessly. All of this, to simply make a "surfcraft" - sometimes it seems overwhelming that so much labour goes into such a disposable tool of the sport.

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5' 10" - Sweep P - Bottom Rail Shaping;

The steps are simple - use a series of geometric measurements to obtain either a 50:50 (boxy) or a 60:40 (down-turn) rail. As Harry has requested a 60:40 rail to make the board surf better while maintaining a substantial amount of thickness for float. We will be focusing on the ":40" part of the ratio. Special tool jigs and a keen eye are very important for the bottom rail; As the bottom rail line is the main contact with the water and the first to "grip/release" when "setting a rail".



It all starts with the squarest edge you can obtain.

Photo: Harry S

  

The Rail Walk
Photo: Harry S




Rail Screen - a tool best served dull
Photo: Harry S

 

Bottom blend complete
Photo: Harry S



Inspection
Photo: Harry S

5' 10" Firewire - Sweet Potato - Concave Shaping

A fun weekend of surf and more on tap for the next few days.
Fall is the best - Wind is up and water temperatures are still in the moderate range (55 - 65F) simply requiring a 3/2 or 4/3 with or without booties.

Fall is notorious for producing the first run of swells for the season, no matter where you are: Lakes, Right Coast or West Coast.

Great to get back into the water locally, especially when its solid 2-3FT peaks and no one else out but you and a few buddies.

Small Peak - No one out



Off the top



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On to the shaping;

Local water and lifestyle photog - Harry S stopped by the FIVE Lab to check out his new custom 5'10" Sweet P come to life and get some base concave work.

Blending single to double channel concave
Photo: Harry S

The board has low entry rocker and we wanted to maintain the paddling advantage by simply adding a moderate single concave up front to help the float forward board pick up waves in smaller mushier surf.

Assessment is time consuming
Photo: Harry S

To compliment the speed obtained from the single concave up front we added slight double channel concave out the back to help direct that fast moving water towards the fins for better drive.

Slight double channel out the tail
Photo: Harry S

This combination concave complimented with a full tail volume and outline should make it the board of choice when its a 1-2FT summer slop day; but still have all of the fun of a snappy fish.



Critical Measurements
Photo: Harry S



Ready for rails
Photo: Harry S

With surf on tap for most of the week, production on the Sweet P is halted to the weekend; with multiple boards in for repairs - there is lots to come in the near future.

Thanks,

Nev.

FCS Twin Fins - Oak/EP - Speed Dialer copy - UPDATE

Excellent weekend of testing, surfing and constructing.

The short list;

1. finished and tested the FCS speed dialer fins (see below)
2. fit (2) new FCS plugs on a customers hybrid OZ fish
3. (2) structural ding repairs on the swallow tips of the OZ fish
4. sanded and prepped (3) structural dings on a Rusty Surftech Gun
5. surf'd our brains out on a fast, rock reef point (8-10FT swell)
6. started work on a customers 5'10 Firewire - Sweet Potato copy (see below for teaser)

The Five Lab is booming! with more and more work coming in everyday.

Lots of exciting things in the works for FIVE - New blog site to go up in a few weeks, product photo shoot is booked and a surf safari essay with WATERSHOTS and hand drawn surf map

Thanks goes out to all of you dedicated lake surfers

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Out of the vacuum and ready for prep sanding and hotcoat.

hotcoat

wood grain

ready for finish sand and polish

hotcoat 2.0

ready for finish sand and polish

mounted and ready for a surf (5'10 Retro Fish pictured)

moments before they hit the water.

Fun 3FT day with only two of your buddies out at a local spot (only 5 mins from the FIVE lab) makes for a wonderful session - let alone when you get to surf a brand new (to you) board and fins with the water is still nice and warm!

Fin Report:

Good - Fast, loose and positive flex out of turns (a good thing).

Bad - scared to surf them in anything over 4FT as the wood core used for the tabs is questionable.

Next time - great template, excellent graphics but need new mounting system (ie: carbon fiber roving/poles drilled into core, then solid epoxy tabs generated by mold.

Thanks

Five Boys'

Teaser - new customer board:

5'10" Firewire Sweet Potato copy - 2LB EPS/custom Poplar stringer

 

Ekk! Surgery Round 2.0 - 6'6" x 20" x 2 3/8" EPS/EP Quad

This poor board; built with the perfect surf in mind...Thumping Mal Pais, CR beach breaks.
One of the later models shaped by Jamers' - a hybrid fish copy, the shape was meant to do it all.

- Quad, wide, thick tailed; But still small enough to duck dive and surf rail to rail.

Then this happened:

On a night like this:

Needless to say there was a ding created and the board was parked for the rest of the trip.

Upon returning back to the FIVE Lab; Jamers' rebuilt the rail on the quad. Then the board sat... and sat.... and sat...upon rediscovering The Quad, it had become subject to a surfboards worst enemy.

MOISTURE.

Riddled with black moldy foam; there was no other option, but, surgery.

Undiscovered Square Headed Shark attack?

*note: see the bear sticker in the background? that was surgery #1.

2.5LB EPS plug shaped to match

Heavy glassing schedule and prep sanding

Hotcoat (note: the bulge was sanded smooth, needed to double up the glass)

New Travel quiver waxed and ready right in time for our first hurricane surf of the year.

(right: 6'10" hybrid. left: 6'6" fish)

A good wax job is worth its weight in gold...

Why buy an ultra light board if you are going to put 3LBS of wax on it?