There are not a lot of kneeboarders out there, but I have always managed to build one or two of them each year. The hollower waves of Hatteras are the kind of waves that kneeboarders are attracted to. I’ve known and ridden with many of them over the years, Robert Finchem, Danny Burrus, Danny Couch, Jeff Oden and Landry  Gray are some of the kneeriders I’ve known and built for.

Most of the guys like the wide swallow tails but I’ve done some round tails also. One that comes to mind is a little 5′5″ disc made for Rob that we called the “The Breakfast Special”. It was oval looking like a plate so we airbrushed bacon, eggs and toast on the bottom, hence the name. But this is one I recently built for Jim Norton. As you can see the outline is slightly forward because a kneeboarder usually is leaning that way while driving through the tube. The tails are relatively thin for good holding power with the wider tails.

Deck of the board carved out.

Corecell ready to insert

One problem the riders have is even with the thick pads the pressure from their knees tend to destroy the decks of their board. Recently we have been using a very dense 1/8″ core cell foam on the decks of our epoxy boards and the results have been really good as far as the decks holding up. Jim wasn’t searching for the lightness of an epoxy and wanted a PU/Polyester board but wanted to increase the deck strength.

To solve the problem we inserted a sheet of corecell into the deck. Originally we planned on a raised deck but later Jim decided he would rather have it blend in on the rail so I shaped out a place to insert the hard foam into. We really wanted to add some strength so underneath the layer of corecell and between the foam blank we used a 12 0z triaxle fiberglass cloth. If we had done the whole deck like this it would have probably been to heavy so we only did an area where the knees would be doing the most damage.

The rest of the board was glassed normally with a 60z bottom and a 6/4 oz deck. It did come out slightly heavier than normal but that won’t hurt, especially the way it will be used. The board dimensions are 5′10″x 22 3/4″ x 2 5/8″.  It has a 17 7/8″ nose and a 17 1/4″ tail. The width across the tips of the swallow is 10 1/4″.

- Scott