Ruku Blades Sea Monster

NZD $449.00 Price Including GST
NZD $390.43 International Tax Free

Ruku's blade art

the selected product is not available.
EARN 4490 REWARDS POINTS

Earn Rewards Every Time you Shop at Ocean Hunter

As an Ocean Hunter member you'll earn 5% back on every purchase you make that can be redeemed on future orders.  
  • Every 1000 Ocean Hunter Reward Points is worth $5  
  • Use your points on your next purchase or hold on to your points to get an even bigger discount.
  • When you sign up for an account your details are saved securely so next time you'll be able to move through the checkout process even quicker.

Fins, Blades & Pockets, Composites, Ruku

Description

Ruku has been proudly supplying Ruku blades to the New Zealand market for many years. The sports of spearfishing and freediving truly test the best of equipment on the market and with this Ruku has been quietly working away at producing a better blade more suitable for the sport we all enjoy.
 
The goals of the new redesign have been to create a blade that performed over a wider range of user’s from a new spearo to the rigors of commercial diving and competition diving. Ruku blades have been rebuilt from the ground up with a complete redesign of the blades internal structure and now using a more advanced resin system.
 
The comprehensive redesign involved rigorous testing so we could develop new features such as the ellipse end and the angle of the pocket. A lot had to be considered, but with the help of a broad range of divers Ruku has truly delivered the next generation in performance.


Ruku is proud to work with Jaco and put a series of Ruku blades featuring his work.

Pockets that fit Ruku's

Ruku Blades will fit most pockets, Picasso, Mares, Seatec, Omer Millenium, Pathos(need glued).

The following pockets require Ruku to modify the blade at manufacturing, which can lead to a delay in delivery.

Omer Stingray, Pathos if you require the Rukus to be glued into Pathos pockets this will cost $60.

Pathos if you require the Rukus to be glued into Pathos pockets this will cost $60

Ruku’s are a handmade composite blade, and proudly New Zealand made. The Blades come with a 3 year warranty.

Selecting a Blade
Ruku Blades now have a broader range of uses. When selecting your blade most importantly you need to consider your body weight, any injuries including ankles and legs.
 
Ruku Model Intended User

      
X Soft        Under 60kg
       Soft            60kg -75kg
       Medium     75kg -95kg Spearfishing,Scuba
       Medium     75kg - 85kg Commercial use (Kina, Paua)
       Hard           95kg + Spearfishing, Scuba more fitter and heavier diver
       Hard           85kg+ Commercial use (Kina, Paua’s) see commercial blade


Please note if you have injuries, it would be advisable to drop a model down. injuries especially ankle and knee can create fatigue which will result in poor performance in your technique.


Testimonial from Dave Mullins

Dave Mullins is New Zealand’s deepest diver, he holds 17 national records and six freediving world records. To add to his accolades he holds a world record for a striped marlin which weighed 156.6kg’s

Up until a couple of years ago I swam with flat plastic fins. These performed well enough underwater but the lack of angle was starting to injure my ankles, particularly in competitions that involved lots of surface swimming.

In freediving I use very high angle monofins to reduce knee angle, both when kicking and when in the glide phase of the dive. After looking at the local options I bought a pair of Ruku's because the blades were angled well and they are made in New Zealand. I’ve always felt that the angle, length and flexural characteristics of a fin are far more important than the material used. Carbon fibre is lighter than glass but ultimately I haven’t been able to find much difference between the materials in real performance terms.

My first Rukus were Medium stiffness and while they felt good on the surface, they seemed a bit too long and had a tendency to fold in the middle under power. This wasn’t an issue on shallow dives but showed up when I went deeper, especially in Wellington conditions with a thick suit and lots of weight. It felt like they reached a point where the fin tips couldn’t keep up and ended up trailing behind the rest of the blade rather than actively pushing water. Changing to a pair of slightly shorter and much stiffer Commercial blades fixed the power issue but the trade-off was a hard slog when swimming long distances. The blades were really built to sprint and carry heavy loads.

When I spoke to Ruku I was told a redesign was on the way and after I gave some feedback we decided to experiment with a couple of variations. The aim was to keep the fins fairly soft but able to perform on surface sprints and deep dives without folding. It was an interesting exercise as a re-design of the internal structure yielded some fins that looked nearly identical to the previous model but behaved quite differently. The version with slightly reduced length and a steeper taper built into the laminate clearly outperformed both the originals and the much shorter comparison blades. They seemed to be effective across a wider range of speed and power, settling into a nice ‘jogging’ pace on the surface but still keeping up with harder kicking on sprints and deep ascents.

To be fair I had given Ruku a pretty tough brief after using my original Rukus since I weigh 100kg, operate mostly in cold water, favour soft fins and enjoy deep diving. This awkward combination of preferences and constraints probably meant that I ran up against equipment limits many divers just wouldn’t notice. I imagine it would be quite easy to slap together some tapered fibreglass sheets and churn out moderately functional fin blades that satisfy enough of the spearo population to stay commercially viable. It’s a lot more difficult to produce something that holds up in a more demanding freediving context and Ruku’s approach to continual improvement has been very rewarding.

The new blades should satisfy anybody looking for a good balance between surface swimming and depth performance, even at the serious end of recreational diving. 
 
Dave Mullins


 DSC2126-527-870-946-841   DSC2112-594
 

Questions?

In order to assist us in reducing spam, please type the characters you see:

Grab One

Ruku Spearo Blades
Out of Stock

Select Options

Ruku Spearo Blades

NZD $429.00 Price Including GST
NZD $373.04 International Tax Free
Ruku Blades Mermaid Zombie
Out of Stock

Select Options

Stiffness
Add Pockets

Ruku Blades Mermaid Zombie

NZD $449.00 Price Including GST
NZD $390.43 International Tax Free
Ruku Custom Blades
Out of Stock

Select Options

Stiffness
Add Pockets

Ruku Custom Blades

NZD $519.00 Price Including GST
NZD $451.30 International Tax Free
Ruku Blades Skulls
Out of Stock

Select Options

Stiffness
Add Pockets

Ruku Blades Skulls

NZD $449.00 Price Including GST
NZD $390.43 International Tax Free
Ruku Blades Aotearoa
Out of Stock

Select Options

Stiffness
Add Pockets

Ruku Blades Aotearoa

NZD $449.00 Price Including GST
NZD $390.43 International Tax Free

GET $10 OFF YOUR FIRST ORDER BY JOINING OUR NEWSLETTER

Email*