Last week I bought a new (to me) windsurf board - A 2007 Tabou Freestyle 100
Its a great board and in good condition with just a few of the cosmetic scuffs which are typical of boards that have been used a bit.
The fin with its old rusty lug
The fin (which has been cut down to 21cm) is missing its retaining screw and also the lug which runs in the finbox must have been lost at some point and the previous owner had replaced it with a bit of steel tube which has all but rusted away !
The retaining nut and bolt can be easily bought at either the local windsurf shop for €5 or at Decathlon for €1.99 - no prizes for guessing where I bought mine !!
Unfortunatley the stainless steel lug which goes at the other side of the fin seem to be unobtainable - at leat I couldn't find any. So a trip to the hardware shop was in order. The options here were either buy a length of stainless steel rod - which they would have to order and which would cost a few €uros or buy the longest 5mm diameter stainless steel bolt that they had, which had a long enough unthreaded section to make 2 replacement stainless steel lugs. Total cost 30 cents and a few minutes work to cut the screw down, file the lugs to size and round off the sharp edges - 15 cents each , not bad.
Cut the stainless steel screw into 3 pieces
Then File smooth and check for length
It was then necessary to carefully drill out the reusted in remains of the previous replacement, insert the shiny new lug in the fin , add a drop of superglue to stop it from slipping back out again and hey presto ready to go windsurfing !
The finished article
Some windsurf fins ( wave and custom freestyle)
Now we just need a bit of wind to try this thing out !
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