Deep pockets in Mold F.O.R.G.E.: which settings actually do it

Pocket depth in Mold F.O.R.G.E. lives in the Deck Geometry panel, top right in the screenshot above. Three settings do the work:

• Concave Drop: how far the rails climb above the middle of the deck.
• Tub Width - Flat: how wide the flat floor is, and so how steep the walls get.
• Concave Length: how much of the deck holds that full depth before it eases off toward the kicks.

As for the ideas in the post: wheel flares add height at the rail over the wheels, which can box a pocket in at each end, but they never lower the middle. The kick Transition shapes the bend into the nose and tail, not the curve across the board. And Flare Height won't go below zero unless you switch on Extreme Mode, where, going by the tool's code, a negative value would dip the rail over the wheels rather than deepen anything.

The tool's own glossary uses the word for two different things:

• The tub. A flat strip down the middle of the deck with the rails curving up either side. The glossary says that flat centre creates "a distinct pocket". Tub Width - Flat sets it; at 0 you get a continuous U-shape instead.
• Spoon kicks. Concave carried on into the nose and tail, which gives your fingers "a defined pocket for catching flips". Without them, the kicks are flat side to side.

Wheel flares are a third thing: raised sections at the rail near the wheels, there to stop wheelbite and, in the glossary's words, "to lock the rider's fingers into position".

It's all small on a deck 32 to 34 mm across. The most Concave Drop the app allows in normal use is 3.5 mm, and your fingers feel that shape through whatever grip is on top, so judge a pocket with the tape or foam you actually ride.

1. Save a preset before you touch anything (Save, under Shape Style / Presets). The app restores your last session when it reopens, so without one your starting numbers are gone the first time you quit. Name presets by their values, like 34-drop3.0-tub12.
2. Set Board Width first. The app caps Tub Width at Board Width minus 18 mm: up to 16 mm of flat on a 34 mm deck, 14 mm on a 32.
3. Raise Concave Drop. It's the height the rail reaches above the flat, measured at the edge of the deck. The default is 1.5 mm and the field stops at 3.5 mm. Change one setting, look, then change the next.
4. Then widen Tub Width - Flat. The drop stays the same but happens over less width, so the walls steepen and the floor reads as a floor. On a 34 mm deck at the defaults (1.5 mm drop, 8 mm tub) the rail climbs 1.5 mm across the outer 13 mm of each side; at a 3.5 mm drop and a 16 mm tub it climbs 3.5 mm across 9 mm.
5. Stretch Concave Length. This is the part of the middle that holds full depth. Past it the concave eases off and is gone where the kick starts. It can't be longer than the wheelbase.
6. Turn on Spoon Kicks if the pocket you want is at the nose and tail. Tick Enable Spoon Kicks and set Spoon Depth, up to 2 mm.
7. Add flares last. Tick Enable Wheel Flares and the WHEEL FLARES group appears: Flare Height (up to 1.5 mm), Flare Length, Flare Inward Width and Offset Y (from truck). A negative Offset Y, down to −5 mm, slides the flares toward the middle of the wheelbase. Flares raise the rail around the pocket; they don't lower its floor.
8. Check the depth in section, not in perspective. Switch Object Type to Board_Preview and turn on View → Enable Clipping Plane, which gives you a cutting plane you can drag and turn; set it across the deck. The MEASURE button in the viewport (new in v1.3.0) reads the distance between two points you click.

• Reaching for wheel flares to deepen the whole pocket. Flares act at the rail near the wheels; the depth everywhere else is Concave Drop and Tub Width.
• Expecting a negative number to go deeper. Flare Height stops at 0 unless Extreme Mode is on, and the app's own warning for that mode is that you can "input physically impossible dimensions".
• Shortening the Transition to make a pocket. It changes the bend into the kick, not the curve across the board. One user pressing decks from the app wrote in its GitHub Discussions that they had "veneer cracking at the start of the kick transition when I put the parameter at 3.85 and below", adding that dry veneer may have played a part.
• Pressing a wider deck in a mold drawn for a narrower one. The same user found a 36 mm deck pressed in their 34 mm mold came out with more concave, and keeps a separate mold for each width; the maker's explanation was that wider wood gets pushed "further up the vertical walls".
• Unclamping too early. The maker's pressing guide says to keep a deck under pressure for at least 24 hours to minimise springback, "the wood losing its curve".

The thread now has replies. One commenter suggests a different tool, fingerboard.io, and guesses the answer is "just a really deep concave with large transition". The deep-concave half matches Mold F.O.R.G.E.'s docs; in this app, the transition changes the kick, not the pocket.

For the tool itself, the Parametric Engine page of the Mold F.O.R.G.E. wiki explains every setting, and the Mold F.O.R.G.E. GitHub Discussions are where the maker and people pressing boards from it compare notes.

If you're the one asking, post your numbers in the original post in r/Fingerboards: Board Width, Concave Drop, Tub Width, Concave Length and whether spoon kicks are on, with a clipping-plane view. Questions with numbers in them get replies with numbers in them, and if you crack it, put the working values back in the thread.