Side bites don’t get much love- at least to me, it seems. They make holders for single fins, special travel carriers for tri fins setups, but I noticed that the side bites that I sometimes use with my single fin (2+1) setup were relegated to a plastic bin. I thought it was high time to make a rack for these, just like my single fin rack.
I used a piece of scrap lumber leftover from another project. I found that at 3.5″ wide, this would work pretty well for side bites. I also found a 1/2″ square dowel in the garage that I thought about using for “uprights” for the fins.

Material I used

Turning the fins on the diagonal

I’m going to turn the bites on the diagonal, however- like my single fin rack- so I have a better view of them on the shelf. And instead of having separate slots for each side bite, I’m going to mount them as pairs for better organization.
First, I measured the width of the fins at the base as a pair. I have mostly Futures and FCS, so this measurement was about 1/2″.

Bases together

Since side bites have a thinner profile, compared to say, a thick Turbo Tunnel single fin, I could place the pairs pretty close together. The height of the 1/2″ dowel would give enough stability to the bases of the fins so they wouldn’t fall over.
I decided to give the pairs a slot space of 5/8″, so I could remove the pairs easily, but not have a lot of slop. I spaced the pairs the width of the dowel, at 1/2″.

Squaring up placement

I then marked out each space for where I will glue the dowel pieces down on the board using a 45. I also marked out the length I would need to cut each dowel at each space. Of course, I had to cut the dowel at 45’s to be flush with the front edge of the base wood board. All were the same size, except when I got to the end where I made one a bit shorter to fit.

Dowel placement marked out

The completion of this project can be found in tommorrow’s entry here.