Clearwood Blog

Using Rocker Tabs for Building in the Rocker Profile

If you have ever built a hollow wood standup paddleboard (SUP) or hollow wood surfboard you have probably built it using some variation of a rocker table.  When I started building hollow wood boards I did as well.  I built my first boards that way because that’s the way everyone else was building.  But there is a simpler way of building these hollow wood boards without building this single purpose adjustable table.  The CLEARWOOD team has developed a rocker tab system that allows the frame to be assembled on a flat work surface instead of the adjustable rocker table.  The rocker tabs are designed into the bottom to the frames and are referenced off of a flat baseline which is part of the layout created when designing the board.  The tabs are cut off and sanded flush when the board is flipped over during the building process.

If you are a builder that does your own design work you can easily design these tabs into your framework during the design process.  The addition of the rocker tabs will consume a bit more plywood but not substantially more and the simplified setup for establishing a true rocker profile makes it well worth the additional effort. I cut my frame kits out with a cnc router but I am also starting to see builders that hand cut their parts starting to experiment with the rocker tab solution to creating a consistent rocker profile.