Join me in encouraging Ragboy

[Coop]

Awesome, Robert! Congratulations. You deserve that big time. Great to see.

[Surfdad]

@ joe

"You did a great job going outside the box in designing a board for Robert. Most would think you need more foam to get up. "

Thanks!

Yeah, we wrestled with that concept at the beginning, and we got differing feed back until Robert confirmed that being able to sink it would be easier for him.

So from there, the logical choice was plywood. Cheap! so that we could test the design before putting money into it. Water has a density of like 60 PCF and the plywood is around 40, so it felt like a happy medium.

In the water, you can push the plywwod down and it sort of sinks...then slowly glides back up to where you can maange it with your feet. The 20 PCF differential seems to be optimum in allowing some bouyancy (that is the board did sink to the bottom of the lake ) but not too much.

What was very interesting was developing that understanding that bouyancy wasn't a help in this situation, it was more of a hinderance. Surf style boards are thick, typically, because of their roots in the ocean, but we don't paddle in or out so we don't really need the extra flotation. Just thick enough to develop the required "stiffness" is all. The surface area of this board was adequate to plane Robert's 400 pounds.

It put a lot of stuff in perspective, not the least of which is that you don't need a 3" thich board for a 400 pound guy to surf and there isn't a board currently available that breaks that "commonly believed" concept.

[jbort]

Cheers cheers cheers to Ragboy!!!! Thx thx thx to Surfdad for all the effort and work.

[Yessup]

Way to go Robert I will look forward to watching the progression. Keep it up

[ajholt7]

I haven't been on the forum in a few days. I come here tonight and see this. Wow, Congrats Ragboy! That is awesome!

[Joeprunc]

Any more luck this past weekend??? Or is the board no bueno?

[ragboy]

I have to rebuild the board, but the polar bear event is this weekend, and that is keeping me WAY busy, but I will get back to it. I hope we have a weekend or 2 left after this, usually up here, after halloween, its rain and snow.