Are you familiar with dissonance theory? Actually, it’s the theory of cognitive dissonance. This theory of cognitive dissonance in social psychology proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance by altering existing cognitions, adding new ones to create a consistent belief system, or alternatively by reducing the importance of any one of the dissonant elements.
We’ve all done this. So when a friend says did you need those fox fur trimmed tires? We say something like, well it will help with resale value. Or some other stupid thing. Or something like well that ONE event/episode doesn’t count, so I can ignore it. The best example we’ve ever read: I’m not the kind of person who allows smooth-talking salesmen to get the better of him, but somehow I seem to have ordered 1000 leather business cards; naturally, I’m troubled by the dissonance. There’s no way out of this without having to admit to myself and others that in fact I am all too susceptible to basic techniques of persuasion, so instead: the very next time someone presents me with their own card, I feel scorn for the pitiful rectangle of paper I’ve just been handed. Right? We’ve all done it and if you haven’t 
you know of someone who does.
Still makes us laugh. Some folks are more practiced at it and will surround themselves with weak people that will admire the leather business cards rather than be direct and say; wtf? They’ll do anything to avoid that dissonance.
As the theory goes; this starts a process of entrapment – action, justification, further action, further justification – that increases our intensity and commitment, and may end up taking us far from our original intention or principles.
There is an extrapolation to an error averse community or culture. We’d think that if our community was error averse, folks would be more careful and NOT make mistakes, but dissonance theory says the exact opposite occurs. By living in such a community, when errors or failures occur, they are justified, not as errors but as proper steps and appropriate behavior or judgement.
We, tend to like to share all of the stuff we do. The sloppy working conditions, or when we do work under the large banyan tree 
Ok, it’s not, it’s a Maple or something, but it is shady! Or videos when James misses a trick, we show it rather than what becomes the acceptable practice of editing the fall out so that you are LEAD to believe it was landed. To a large degree, remaining true to our principles is more important to us than what some folks think. Especially those sliding heavily down that self-justification slope.
There is a saying in the boxing world. One money fight, ends your amateur career…or something to that effect. If you don’t apply that consistently, uniformly and clearly, you’re really lying. But it’s funny to see how folks justify it to develop their own intended results…cheating, quite frankly.
Ok so we said all of that, to bring us to the construction of this newest wakesurf board. We’ve show you that we are way further along than we’ve documented but we want to, slowly, bring everyone up to speed.
One of the things that most skimmers do in their construction, is they bend in the shape during construction. The final structure is significantly stiff, so the pre-tensioned core is probably safe in terms of returning to it’s original shape – FLAT. A better way would be to thermoform the core into the desired shape, but BENDING really reduces the cost and time of construction and the difference in the longevity of the final product or the ride is immaterial, so might as well save the money!
Normal surf style construction mills the shape from a slightly larger block of foam. EPS foam is now consistently molded to the general shape of the board. This reduces waste considerably and also creates a more uniform blank both in the material used, but also the lack of pre-tension in the final product. For this build, we’ve opted out of that method, instead bending in the rocker. we’ve always bent in the curve of the outline for our rail material, we’re taking it a step further and bending in the rocker. In effect there is a three dimensional bending taking place.
Yep, we’re working in the great out-of-doors! As you can see in that picture, the rail material is comprised of 3 layers of 1/4″ strips. Those strips are straight and not cut to the shape of the rocker. In the past, we have cut the rocker shape into them. For this build, all curves are bent…outline and rocker. It significantly reduces waste and labor. As you can imagine, cutting six strips of material using a table saw set at the thickness of the core of the board is significantly easier than using the rocker. Plus alignment during glue-up is so much easier.
We apply resin to the individual pieces and the exposed edge of the core, using a paintbrush
Next we tape the whole side together as a unit, this allows us to align the nose. We’ve also trimmed the first two layers to the proper length, so they matched at the tail. The final layer didn’t quite meet at the end, because we are using a section of material that isn’t quite long enough!!!!
Lather, rinse, repeat! We do both sides and then it’s ready for the vacuum bag
Inside the bag and the vacuum pulled. If you look closely you can see then slight gap at the back of the board in that third layer of material. Also, this whole project went into the bag FLAT and we are bending in the shape.
Definately a different construction methodology for surf style wakesurfers. Thanks so much for following along, we really appreciate it!
Technorati Tags: different wakesurf construction, dissonance theory
Follow Us!