How Would You Cut This Board?

I paid $45 for an old windsurfer that I assume needs to be cut down. It’s 112" (284cm) long by 37" (100cm) wide at the center by 5 1/4" (13cm) max thickness. She weighs a hefty 33.4 lbs (15 kilos) and will be fitted with THIS FOIL. Any suggestions on how best to shape her for a 180 lb (81 kilo) novice foiler would be much appreciated!


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Oh, I haven’t held a surfboard in my hand yet, but jigsaw with short metal cutting blade and angle grinder with P40 disc sander will get you to the Moon on that
As for PPE: there’s fast flying large pieces of EPS foam and irritant glass fibers against which one of those ‘breathing’ vapour suits (not dust suits), guggles, FFP2 dust mask, protective gloves and a good scrub in a cool shower afterwards would be nessecity. Getting ready for rebuilding and rebuildng are different topics<:P

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I would just cut 85cm off the back. When you cut out the recess for batteries/box, I would also cut out the dagger-board structure. Too much weight. At that weight id also check for any signs of water. Maybe leave it out in the sun for a few days once its been cut and see if it loses weight.

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Yo need to cut a lot off the front and a bit off the back. For an efoil board you only want a little bit of rocker in the front, and a flat mid and rear section. With a lot of rocker the foil will sit at the wrong angle and make it harder to ride.

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Thanks Jezza. Won’t more rocker in front reduce the chance of burying the nose when the front end suddenly dips down while learning to ride? Looks like that’s a primary cause of wipe-outs on the videos I’ve watched…

The rocker doesn’t really help that much I don’t think. If you look at Hiorths board it has almost no rocker.
The lift efoil only has a bit of rocker in the nose. My board are all pretty flat and I find them easy to control.

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Hi there,
i would just cut the back of the board for easy patch after. Depending on the size you need it to be, i would reduce it to a 7’ (2,10m) for easier startup.
Remember that cutting the back will also reduce a little bit of front rocker.
I will also canibalize my wave windsurf board some time when i start to build my project, and i will not cut anything in size. Volume of my board is only 120 Liters and i weight around 90Kg, so i can’t stand up in such board like a SUP. Too narrow, and we need some speed to make board stable enough to stand.

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Thanks Riu. Just cutting the back will certainly make for the easiest job. But, as Jezza said, there might be too much rocker up front. Now I’m actually thinking of not cutting it at all for initial tests. My board volume is 220 liters so plenty of flotation. And it is 93 cm wide.


Reminder to all: Don’t forget to add your build profile. Details HERE

284cm is pretty long, even for a windsurfer. Lift eFoil is somewhere around 1.50m, I would head for something between that and 2m. You would need to re-do the foil mount if you decide to cut it later.

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Thanks Benjo. There’s a long thru-hull slot in the back third of the board (where the daggerboard used to be) that I’m thinking of using with a fabricated foil mount clamped in place with two thru-bolts. This would allow me to slide the foil forward or aft quite a bit for testing.

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That is a great idea! This slot could be a pain though if you want to cut it then :sweat_smile:

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As said above cut back off to apx 7 ft . The board is very wide and thick so tons of foam to float you. To give an idea of ideal shape have a look at Stand up Paddle foil boards . For you other guys out there older model short fat Stand up paddle boards are perfect to convert and far lighter than old wind surfers. This is a link to the Naish page ( I’m nothing to do with them) but gives a good idea of how short you can go but still have stability and floatation standing still on it.

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