FoilMount tips

[sharksupper]

I know the stick on FoilMount is not the best/strongest solution for getting a foil attached to a board, but I think how you install it and set up your foil on it could help in using it without something failing/breaking as easily.

There were a couple of things I did when setting mine up which I feel helped to more evenly distribute the forces on the board.

I have the split version of the mount so it can more easily bend over the V in the board, but I would imagine just about every board has some V and even the non-split mount probably bends some too.

When I set my foil on the mount after sticking it to the board I noticed the perfectly flat plate mount on the foil side was rocking on the bent FoilMount on the board.  To me this seemed like I would be introducing a lot of "pre-load", if you will, to the mounting plate and on the board when the foil gets bolted down.  Just bolting the foil down to it would result in it trying to lift the plate up off the board at the sides.

I did two things to mitigate this:
1. I took a sanding block and sanded down the center ridge on the FoilMount so it was more flat, but I didn't want to remove too much material as to weaken it, so then I also did a second thing...
2. I bought some very large diameter rubber washers and placed them between the FoilMount plate and the foil.  This fully prevented the rocking of the foil on the mount plate, so that when it was bolted up it wasn't trying to pry the FoilMount off the board.

The one other thing I do is not to leave the foil bolted to the board, I keep the screws loose until I'm about to hit the water and then loosen them back up right after getting out, this keeps the board from constantly being stressed.

If you do happen to use one of these mounts, I think these things will help, good luck!  Mine is still going strong after several months and has seen double over conditions at times.

[surfcowboy]

Excellent man. Thanks for posting.

Check out BluePlanet's latest video on his foil boards. He shows using shims from laminate floor installs to shim up plates on a board with V in it. Same idea as your rubber washers but maybe stiffer.