Journal: My Journey into Making my First Monofin

[MerLady]

Title pretty much says it all. :)
I'm making my first monofin and went to go see what I could find on the internet. Although I found quite a bit of useful information on some things, I found very little information on others. I've started with the design of the monofin, something I have hand drawn and based off of several monofins I have either held in person or watched many many videos on.
I've based the monofins size off of my finis rapid, to which I traced on packaging paper (butcher paper) and then made my own changes to. Like smoothing out the bumps created by the buckles of the foot strap, reshaping the end of it to look "fishy" and bringing the feet closer together to create a better tail effect.
I based how the foot pocket attaches to the blade off of the monofin magictail.de sells with their mermaid skins, changing it in such a way that your feet would not be crammed into a single foot pocket. (got to try my freinds on once. It was very uncomfortable.)
And the foot pocket was pretty much my idea as far as I know. However I based how to make it off of how I learn how to make medieval turn shoe patterns (I'm an SCA goer)

I'll be sharing mostly everything on here and maybe in the future doing a short series of youtube videos depending on how well it does here.

[MerLady]

January 31st 2014
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l199/snowshoetiger/Mobile%20Uploads/P_20140130_205750_2_zpsb562dc19.jpgWoho! Finally got the plastic cut! I have had this hunk of polycarbonate forever! Due the fact that I couldn't afford to get everything done at once and the place I got it cut at is kind of far away it took me little over 6 months to get this step done.
I decided to not cut it myself for the first one because I'm making the foot pockets from scratch and would like to make sure I know which one fails if they do, indeed, fail. (a girl can hope, right?)
The surprisingly cool plastic galore place I went to is called tap plastic. And not only can you get the right stuff for your monofin, depending on the location, they'll cut it for you too.
www.tapplastics.c (http://www.tapplastics.com)om (http://www.tapplastics.com)
^ Here's there website ^
I choose to use a slightly thicker polycarbonate than what magictail.de has because the friend I mention in my last post mentioned how she was afraid it'd snap it if swam she too hard. It's 1/8th of an inch thick.

[Mermaid Dottie]

This should be fun!
Good luck!

[MerLady]

:) Thank you. I should be posting details and pictures when I get around to making the pattern for the foot pockets soon.

[BayouMermaid]

I would love to make a monofin one day, so I'll definitely be watching this thread. Good luck!

[MerLady]

Febuary 1st 2014
A Bump in the Road
I went to make the pattern for the foot pockets and found that the polycarbonate piece that would serve as the anchor on the inside of the foot pockets was too big...
So, back to the drawing board! Sort of. I'm retracing my biggest foot (the right one) and leaving a tiny bit of extra room for toe comfort.
The inner anchoring piece should be like a shoe insert, too big and when the foot pocket is done, you'll find your foot sloshing around while swimming.
Once the tracing is done I'll have to wait until I can find my way to tap plastic again so I can have them re-cut it.
http://i96.photobucket.com/albums/l199/snowshoetiger/Mobile%20Uploads/P_20140201_153517_zpsaa4ed839.jpg