Yewww

Woohoo keep the JK stoke going!

i love surfing mine with the Futures WCT's which are very similar to K2.1's..........JacKnife rocks

stoked to hear fazza. it definitely goes under the radar, but it is an entirely sick board!!

I am getting desperate. I still have not had any decent waves on the JK, I'm starting to get superstitious. I've had it just over 3 weeks and have not had a wave longer than about 2 seconds, or the ones I have, have been from low tide banks out the back pumping the damn thing to keep going into the inshore banks and then usually closeout anyway. First surf I had one wave I think where I did get about 3 turns done, maybe a couple of waves but in mediocre shories. I'm starting to wonder, is it me, the board, the fins, the waves. Faaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrk this is the pits. The waves have definitely been low quality of late and not being able to really get a good session on this board when I can feel the potential and even see flashes of it here and there is just so frustrating. I'm going nuts here!

Hi Slowman, just wanting to get your thoughts on my next board. Have a Potatonator which is my first FireWire.
The Potatonator has been a revelation and at 51 never thought I would get onto a 6 footer.( could go a little shorter)
Now thinking about the next board. Initially was going to get a Spitfire but then after reading this forum have swapped between the Spit, El Feugo, Hellfire and now the Jack Knife. See there is a unibrow on the way to add to the mix.
See that you have three of these boards and wondering if you could only have one of them which it would be.
Curse FireWire for too many options. Have ridden the Potatonator in all sorts of conditions and can not fault it. Now means that 5 other boards in the shed no longer see daylight. Perhaps that is my answer and I should keep pushing the Potatonator ? Cheers.....

Hi Bigblackdog, I think a Hellfire would complement the Pnator nicely. A Spitfire would be too much overlap with your Pnator. If I could only have one board it would be a toss up between the Hellfire and Jacknife. At this point I'd have to say it would be the Hellfire as I've really had some good waves on it and know what it can do. If I ever get a decent wave again the Jacknife might be the choice but so far as I've lamented they keep eluding me. The Jacknife has a more refined feel than the Hellfire and seems to be able to catch waves well, even small ones though not as well at the Spitfire. So for small waves that's where the Pnator would take over. The Jacknife is not as stable as the Hellfire it is more sensitive and if you get up wrong footed it is more noticeable where as the Hellfire is a bit more forgiving. If you want a little more forgiveness then go with the Hellfire it's a little more user friendly in my opinion.

Thanks for that Slowman. The Hellfire sounds like the best option. I like Stability and forgiveness.
Look forward to an update on the Jacknife once you score good conditions.

Finally got some decent waves in the head high to overhead range this morning on a barreling rip bowl with a light NW offshore. It was a nice right with an occasional left. Sort of like a moving peak that was moving from left to right mostly so mostly rights. Occasionally when the peak came straight in from out the back a good bowly left would break off the other side of the a-frame.

One thing I can say about the JK, it doesn't really like surfing out on the flats that much. It loves the pocket and being on a decent wall and you can gouge a cut back on the steep part of the wave with confidence. Never really got shacked but came close a couple of times taking off behind the peak and turning up under the lip into the pocket. Just unlucky I suppose not to get one that threw a bit more.

I've tried a few quad sets now 1. H3 quads (perhaps a bit stiff), 2. Rusty R2 quads which were a little looser but I felt I could still go looser 3. K2.1 quads seemed OK and loose enough 4. Stretch SF4 quads: probably keep these for smaller fuller waves. I used them today but went back in and swapped the K2.1s back in, definitely better. A tad more hold. I found the SF4s not really sliding but drifting a bit and found myself pushing my back foot to the edge of the rail to get better hold. Once you start noticing that, you know things aren't right.

I started out surfing the point (a left) but the wind was blowing up the face too strongly and holding me up a bit and this wave needs to be raced across the inside section to make the end sections and the wind was making it pretty hard and also chopping up the face. A couple of guys I knew paddled over to the beach break that I ended up surfing but were soon back saying the wind was worse over there. They left and I ended up paddling over and the wind died off a bit and for about an hour the rights were sweet, with the occasional left as mentioned. I definitely got some waves that were longer than 2 seconds finally! At least 50m long and some longer, say 70-80m if you were lucky. The wind had backed off and the tide was rising and it was getting better but unfortunately the SW started gusting and that was it, all over red rover. Within minutes the wave had been ripped apart and chopped up into disjointed sections looking like stair cases as they sucked on the bank.

This board has very good manners when dropping down a sucking face, it turned nicely into a driving bottom turn and then carves nice on the face or snaps nice up into the lip or under it, both backhand and forehand. I didn't do any thing earth shattering but I finally felt like I was in control of the board, doing the manoeuvres I wanted to do, when I wanted to, and linking it all together (little wonder though when you get some decent quality and length of ride). It seems to like clean waves better than mush. The hellfire probably handles mushy conditions a little bit better. The JK also feels smaller than the HF even though they are the same size. I haven't run a tape measure over them yet but I'm sure it's like 6'1" or something!! Could just be the fuller but thinner nose and the thinner tail. It kind of feels similar to my old Webber Afterburner. At some point I might try the TC Redlines with the 3" trailer that I use in the AB as well as the K2.1 thruster set.

good stuff

The next day (Sunday) was bigger; solid overhead. Gotta say it takes the drop well and has plenty of speed from the start, I still had the K2.1 quads in, I still don't think I have the fins right yet, at least as a quad. The K2.1s were good in the head high waves the day before but these overhead waves were perhaps overhead and a half and I just felt a bit reluctant to pull too hard a turn, it still went well and I got some good waves but it felt like I might spin out if I tried something too hard, perhaps I should have, just to test the limits but it was one of those days with long lulls where it was a bit of wait in between waves. I'll try the R2s again. To be fair they never got tested on anything decent.

Well after the having surfed this thing for a few weeks now I can say I am really liking this board. I went back to my favourite quad set the R2s and even shaped another little stabiliser. It surfed pretty good as a straight quad but occasionally I felt I couldn't get it to go as vertical as I'd like. It's so small it might just be placebo effect but it seems to work better and it doesn't make it stiff or cause any drag.

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I've surfed it in a range of sizes and conditions now from thigh high to 1.5 x overhead, even a couple 2 x overhead bombs on the day. It has a very nice feel about it. It feels different because of the refined foil and the rails seem a bit thinner than either the spit of the HF. Even in fuller waves it still goes OK but perhaps because of the little groms having their before school session I wished I had taken out the spit as they were all over the waves and having no trouble catching them. I could still catch the better ones but the ones that filled up instead of drawing on the bank I just couldn't compete with them. If I'd had it to myself it might have been different...the spit definitely would have gone better in that situation. This was thigh high and fullish at Wanda one morning

The last 4 days in a row I've surfed a little left pretty much by myself at dawn for 30 to 40 minutes before being joined by another guy that always surfs this place. The first 2 days I rode the spit and yesterday it seemed perhaps a tad bigger, perhaps less lulls. They were almost identical conditions so it was a good chance to compare them. The spit seems to accelerate more off the first turn whereas the JK seems to just accelerate up to speed the moment you take off. Although the spit does start flying pretty quickly if you take off at an angle and go straight down the line. The JK definitely handles a later drop with ease.

When it comes to turning I am really beginning to like the way the JK feels. I guess it feels pretty precise. Whereas the spit feels a bit different, it still turns well and quick but it feels thicker - it is, but I can notice the difference. It just feels like you don't have as much edge in the wave, it doesn't really seem to hinder the kind of turn that you can pull but the JK just seems to feel nicer. It's a bit ethereal it is like a better aesthetic feeling - sounds pretty dumb huh?

Either way I have to say I am very impressed with this board and its versatility. It seems to get into all but the weakest waves as well as the spit. Even with the extra rocker it just seems to paddle so well, I think because the concave is deep enough to flatten out the entry rocker a bit up the centre. Yet that extra rocker on the rails and the little kick in the nose make it easy to drop into steep waves. The spit wins out in the lower range and probably more mushy stuff.

Glad I made the purchase!

Slowman,

Good to here i am still loving my JK.

I surfed it in weak 1-2' waves this morning, although some did have some nice shape. Just about everywhere in Sydney was 0.5' and surfable only if you are a grommy except this place! Anyway, I don't think anyone guessed there would be anything and I surfed for an hour with no one else around and then a couple of SUPs came out.

I then changed to the spit and while it was easier to catch the waves I noticed with the spit's thicker rails it had less bite so when you do those little speed turns it doesn't gain as much speed as the JK, you have to do speed pumps as well, and that I think, is the difference that I like about the JK's thinner rails. The extra edge lets you grip the wave better to push off it down the line.

I'm certain now that if I could only have one board the JK would be it.