What do you think?

[Surfdad]

Daniel Thomson is the shaper at Tomo Surfboards and he creates these short'ish, narrow'ish and straight'ish surfboards. The one in his hands I think is called the death star or some such. It's a 5 fin convertible, but I think I see single FCS plugs up at the nose.

It's definately non-traditional. I saw some of his work at the Santa Cruz Sacred Craft last year and he has some super light surfboards.

What do you guys think about the shape in his hands?

The second picture shows a blank similar to the finished board, but it looks to be finless.

[Timmy!]

I don't like either of those boards. The one looks like a wakeboard and the other looks like a long board from the Brady Bunch episode where they went to Hawaii. HA!

[Iwndr]

Thats Funny

[skippabcool]

From the first glance I thought wakeboard. I guess the big test would be how it surfed.

[Surfdad]

This is a story
about an ugly longboard

I'm not sure if I can do this embedding thing, it's always a challenge for me. This is a similar board, but it's 4'7" out in the ocean, it's crazy short and wakesurf size. I somehow don't think we can make 3' long boards, but it would be fun to try!

[Surfdad]

@ skippabcool - check that vid of a similar board. It seems pretty good.

[Timmy!]

It didn't look as bad all finished. 4'7"? Perfect wakesurf length. He had to work the crap out of that to keep it going, looked tiring!

[NICKYPOO]

I think it looks fantastic. I really would like to have a fast twin tip finless 3/4" deck. It would be the ultimate. Seems like it would have a heavy feeling nose, balance wise. If the weight is super low though, it might be negligible. Build one. I'll ride it!

That other one looks like a pretty good toes on the nose deck. It looks like its got some concave up in the forebody into a flat spot just before the nose. Kinda hard to tell from a pic. It looks really fast actually. I've never ridden a tunnel. Not sure how they turn.

[Joeprunc]

I have a friend in Santa Cruz that is playing with the wake board design as well. He has been thru quite a few different models, designs, fins, and fin placement. I surfed his latest one (which he says is better than any of the others) down in Baja this winter....in my honest opinion I hated it. It was hard to paddle, hard to make late drops, impossible to do a decent bottom turn, and the front wakeboard style fin kept snagging. It felt more like a snowboard than any other board sport. I thought it was a bit out of the box.

It looks like this Tomo's fin setup is much more like a surfboard which you need for drive. The carbon allows additional buoyancy due to the weight loss and also allowed him to taper down the rails which helps you hold your edge on a bottom or top turn. You can tell how loose and skatie the board is. He surfs it pretty well, but it wouldn't surprise me if he kills it harder on a standard board. We saw this Daniel down at Rincon a few months ago with a few different designs in hand.

For wakesurfing on the other had I think it would be great and fun to experiment with! You don't need the buoyancy for paddling so you can slim it down quite a bit. Wakesurfing you can't do big powerful turns that you can in the ocean. I'd try to start out with an old wake board and go from there.

I feel like the design behind a wakeboard is to hold an edge, jump, and land. There is no speed generating needed, because the boat and your edging/strength do that work. Surfing you need to generate your own speed from the power of the wave. That is why I don't think Daniel's design is practical for the surfing industry. Hell Laird rode a stand up hydrofoil at Jaws, that sure didn't catch on.

[Surfdad]

@ Joeprunc - LOL at Laird's hydrofoil not catching on. Something about near death insanity that doesn't have much appeal for the masses I was thinking that the super straight outline would help the speed, but it has to be super skaty to do anything, there just isn't anything to turn off of. BUT, like Nick has pointed out before, also, we don't really turn, we slide mostly.

@ Timmy - I noticed that aerobics work out also, made my chest hurt just watching him!

@ Nick - that heavy nose thing, I'd think you're right, that would have to have a LOT of swing weight, even if thinned out.

I like the concept, just not sure this is the best implementation. I'd love a super short board, like 3'6" long that would generate tons of speed and could be ridden revert after a shuv and we could also do cutbacks in our tiny little wakes.

[jbort]

looks whacky to me but what the heck - sure beats a DOOR!!!

[Surfdad]

Actually, now that I look at it it shares lots of similarities with a door! That door really did suck, but was incredibly fun!

[NICKYPOO]

Maybe you should try one of these?

[Timmy!]

That would be a funny picture, Jeff riding like that! LOL! The visual even cracks me up...

[LovinPowell]

I'd wait to see if it catches on with any of the WCT surfers first.