It would have to be a value similar to the units we measure wave size in... by body parts. "Armpit," "nipple," "elbow," "navel," "bottom rib" would all be valid units.
I'm with you....never got a custom that worked for me---prob user error but at this point I need to hold it before I buy and even with all the dims, volume, my hands on it some just don't work for me....I am the worst at picking out boards...in fact a few boards that I thought looked terrible and wrong for me have worked great. I do have a couple great ones right now though
But hey i never went to shaper and said i want a board about 40 liters or maybe 45 can yu help me out thats really not a starting point for me....but everybody is different, every one i build i use a ruler , caliper ,a template for the rocker and the outline and some other tools but none of my stuff reads out that volume in liters
my only guess would be that expectations for performance could be higher with the custom, but when grabbing from the wall its more of a "f it and adapt" approach/attitude i've had the same results with customs, given they were from a friend who shapes as a hobby with some experience my last two boards have been used customs and i actually love them a ton. i also have dpsup's perspective with spicing things up
Never had a custom feel like "magic" out of the box, but never had a total dog either. Usually takes about 10-12 sessions to get the synergy going, but after that they've all been very good boards. Seems like the few magic boards I've had were other's castoffs. Same goes with the biggest dogs too.
The closest thing I have to a magic board these days is a castoff. The board sat in a shop for so long the shaper pulled it out of the shop and was selling it as a personal sale for cheap. Its a 6'2" rocket fish bat tail quad so not surprising it sat around. I would never have really thought to custom order something like that, but it just looked intriguing, pulled the trigger and it blew me away from go. I wish I knew why.
If that is *YOUR* choice of "softer gender" then go for it. Mine are to be found in scantily clad thread.
This is one of my sons... He pisses me off... Strictly out of jealousy... He made a board out of another board he found in a dumpster. Ugliest thing you've ever seen.. After he rides it for a couple of days, he has to let it drain for a week. But he shreds on it.
For anyone who's interested, I went back and dug through my notes from ages ago, and came up with some numbers: Standard/Stock PU foam is about 2.75pcf for mean denisty... that would be similar to US Blanks' "Blue" density as mentioned in an earlier post. So... compared to the same volume in EPS, the difference would be about 3/4 of a pound: A typical shortboard of 30L... to use round numbers... is about one cubic foot of foam, or about 2.75lbs for a finish-shaped PU blank. The same 30L finish-shaped board in EPS would be a hair under 2lbs. BUT... there are a lot of other factors that determine a board's finished/glassed/hotcoated weight and density... like, if it was EPS, was the blank properly sealed before being glassed, and what material was used to seal it? What weight cloth was used? How wet or dry was the lamination? How thick or thin did the hotcoat and/or gloss coat go on, and how well was it sanded? Etc...
On a LB the weight difference in blanks would be more noticeable but would it be noticeable in terms of float on the wave, all other factors being equal?
