Local Gold Coaster Rodney has done a great job building this board from Balsa with Cedar stringers. He has tested it out in some decent size waves at Lennox and the Tweed bar. His Hot Curl is 9'0" x 19 3/4 x 2 3/8. As per all Hot Curls the deck is dead flat nose to tail with rocker coming out of the thickness. He didn't want to shape one to the early (1930's) design with the wider pod, he was targeting those at the pinnicle of the Hot Curl era through the late '40's and early fifties, with a tighter tail and thinner foil, affectionatley called sinkers. Rabbit Kekai was reportadley one of the best proponants of these finless guns.
The balsa is from PNG with many thanks to Malcom Brough. He specifically asked Malcom to find the heaviest lengths of timber and anything with a bit of character (piths. knots etc) to it. Pat Lyon sourced the Australian Red Cedar stringers for me in 1/2", 1/4" and 1/8" and completed the glue-up. He gave Pat templates for the plan shape and foil so we could reduce the amount of wasted timber. Pat is a perfectionist... a master craftsman with a low key attitude.
On completion of the shaping he had Dale Chapman's factory glasse it in 6oz, deck and hull.
The design is based on a gun design and is therefor not a hot dog design like the alaia. Rodney said It is very much point and shoot. A lot of fun.
