A different "butt crack" question .....

Now that fishes are ridden standing up , is there any reason why the “butt crack” is 6" deep , apart from maybe “tradition” ?

I ask , because I remember reading that , ‘back in the day’ , it was because of “flippers dragging in the water” [when it was kneeboarded , in the late ‘60s onwards] . I think Steve Lis found the fishtail better for that reason ? [Although why a wide square tail , like Peter Crawford’s "Slabs’’ had , wouldn’t have done the same job or better , I am not sure of , exactly]

anyway , that aside …

Also , with a narrower “butt crack” , there is the option of having a back / single fin setup , for thruster, “2 +1” , and or 5 fin setups .

Just curious …

ben

the only reason I could think of , off the top of my head , is that with a 12" wide tip to tip measurement , a 3" deep “butt crack” may look even weirder than a 6" deep one …which moves me to my second question…

…WHY NOT make the tip to tip measurement NARROWER ? [ie: more curve in the bottom half of the board’s outline ]

May I try to think about flex in the long stringerless tips ?

I think, having a big keel at the entrance of the deeep but crack and having flex on the swallow itself gives fishes a part of their charm.

When you shape a deep swallow, you can feel how flexible it is.

Once glassed, it’s still more flexible than any part of your board.

If you push the bottom turn, the swallow will behave like a spring at the end of the curve.

Hey Ben… isn’t it that the large squaretail would be sucked up the face of a hollow wave more easily than a deep swallow coz the swallow tail would have significantly less wetted area…thus allowing hollower waves to be surfed…

I agree with you 'bout a pulled in tail with tips closer together… that would give better turning…

both interesting replies …especially the flex idea , Lob !

… Anyone else ?

I find my wide fish tail still gets sucked up the face more than I would like , which is why I prefer narrower tip width , and more curve in the outline , from [my] hips down to the tail .

cheers for the replies , guys …

ben

I still don’t see why SUCH a wide tail and butt crack is really needed , though , now we are standing on fish tailed boards , instead of kneeling.

" Liguid ?"

… are you out there , mate ? I’d like to read YOUR ( and , other "fish’ riding kneeboarders’ ) take on this … cheers !

Quote:

Now that fishes are ridden standing up , is there any reason why the butt crack is 6" deep , apart from maybe “tradition” ?

I ask , because I remember reading that , ‘back in the day’ , it was because of “flippers dragging in the water” [when it was kneeboarded , in the late '60s onwards] . I think Steve Lis found the fishtail better for that reason ? [Although why a wide square tail , like Peter Crawford’s slabs had , wouldn’t have done the same job or better , I am not sure of , exactly]

anyway , that aside …

Also , with a narrower buttcrack , there is the option of having a back / single fin setup , for thruster, “2 +1” , and or 5 fin setups .

Just curious …

ben

the only reason I could think of , off the top of my head , is that with a 12" wide tip to tip measurement , a 3" deep “butt crack” may look even weirder than a 6" deep one …which moves me to my second question…

…WHY NOT make the tip to tip measurement NARROWER ? [ie: more curve in the bottom half of the board’s outline ]

For what little it’s worth… Back in 1973 or so I shaped a ~6’ twin with a “hex” tail. My previous shape had been a single with a diamond tail; the hex was my concept to apply the diamond to a twin set-up by just drawing out the center point into a line segment, something like this ___/ (angles were actually on the order of 45 degrees). The center tail “flat” was about 6-1/2" as I recall. Board was fairly wide and full, about as thick as I could get a blank (likely between 2-1/2 and 2-3/4"), bottom was flat with very little rocker, and the rails went down and soft about 1’ back from the nose, and went hard about 1’ from the tail. So the shape was kinda, sorta “fishy” (entirely by accident, I’m pretty sure I had never even heard of a Lis fish at the time) except for the lack of a butt crack. Fins were twin fin models that were a little wider and shorter than single fin short board standard, but not really close to a keel concept. Toe and cant were moderate (sorry for the lack of precision, it’s been a long time). I don’t remember how they were foiled, but I am certain it was nothing that would be recognized as a good foil today.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, when the board was put into a hard bottom turn, the fins would hum at a pretty high volume (loud enough to occasionally cause a rider on the same wave to wipe while trying to locate the source). The board had a very easy wave entry, typically one or two strokes and up. It was very maneuverable as well, I could stand it on one of the “corners” and stall it into a nearly vertical climb to the lip, then cut back heeled pretty far over. It could also do a nice, buried rail long carve, so the turning characteristics were pretty versatile. The top planing speed was somewhat disappointing. It wasn’t exactly slow, but I could be overtaken by very fast or very large East coast waves. How much of these characteristics were due to the wide, full tail, and how much to the fin placement, I’m not certain. Is it possible that the butt crack gives water release that is essential to top speed?

-Samiam

Been wondering the same and have decided to get something like this diamond tail made. The idea is that I can get my back foot right back which a wide fish tail doesn’t allow so have the front foot acceleration of the fish and back foot for tighter turns.Looks weird mainly as I think we have become used to the fish shape but heartened in that an outline I took from a Derek Hynd Bushrat fish picture fits the one I came up with very well (see sketch) so will pursue it and see if there are any advantages. I think I can narrow the tail and keep volume for ease of wave catching and if the rails are thin should bury easily enough.

Really wanted to try a pair of wooden keel again but so far its looking to be a quad although I shall have boxes put in for thruster and maybe twinzer. Got a couple of weeks before there’s a slot to get it shaped so time to modify the shape and get a nice template.

Some day, I wanted to shape.

Really BADLY.

I just had an old crappy longboard under my hands…

Soooo… I took my favourite fish template and cut the log into pieces.

Here is what came out of it:

If you draw a swallow, then you’ll have a fish…

If you draw a huge diamondtail then comes the stubbie.

I made my first Bonzer3 out of the log.

the board has almost no rocker.

But it surfes good and can hold speed and size.

It’s a nice idea to dig.

If I can afford to say, you should go on a single center box and put plugs to play with different fin set-ups.

Of course, you are not supposed to plug as much as Chipfish does.

But a box and two side sets sounds good: you’ll be able to try single, twins, tri-fins, quads, five fins… lot of fun to come.

Lob I have seen the pictures of your good looking boards before and thought you or chipfish would point out the similarity of a diamond tail fish to a stubby with single fin or bonzered. Never ridden a single fin or a bonzer sad to say.Not sure if I’m ready to move in that direction with this board. Where is your back foot on that board? I forget how long it is…ah yes 6ft by 20"…so do you move around a lot on the deck whilst surfing it ?

Ben,

Interesting question- one possible design thread would be to the bat tails- check out the Jobson one tha Manny has, there’s a link to it from 70percent.org, interesting looking board and what Manny has to say about it makes a lot of sense. I think a big plus with the old style big butt crack is that when you lay the thing on a rail, it’s a rail line like a pintails that’s in the water you have the great feel of acceleration (non fish riding friends claim it’s about to slide out and that’s way it feels fast, and that may be true, but I still like it!) Something I really enjoy about an older style fish is how you can milk so many different elements of surfin g out of one board. I started riding them because I surfed Venice Breakwater a lot and it was usually smaller and blown out, and the fish worked well, all that planing surface on small board meant you could skate around the mush nicely. First one was a Zephyr beachbreak fish a lot like this (This not my long gone old one, it’s from Juice Magazine’s site) Jeff is an awesome shaper who gets very little publicity and just works away making great boards still.

Worked great in mush and when I took it to nice point breaks like Ventura it was a different board, so much fun to have face and surf it rail to rail. When I tried a San Diego style trad fish (because of seeing Derek Hynd in Litmus) I liked that it felt even more flowy and drawn out and still do. I’m always fully ready to try something else in the fish vein too- one of the bat tails or the Griffin 5 fin, as soon as I figure out how to turn lead into gold so I can afford all the boards I want. The diamond tails seem cool too, seeing one dramn over a fish outline is interesting and Lob’s boards have always been stunning. Anyway, enough of the ‘Why I like Fish’ essay- there;'s a pic of a smaller swallowtail, check out Manny’s board and maybe you’ll have an idea for something after the widowmaker conversion?

I’ve got a board similar to that one Jeff’s eating, and I like my roundtail thruster for bigger stuff, so the blue board I posted in the archieves a couple of days ago was kindof my attempt at a fish front and rocker, with a wide round tail. I guess you don’t get a nice long, straightish edge for speed, like on a Lis template or something, but it still is suprisingly fast.

Well , thanks a lot for your replies guys , I thought for a minute no-one was going to reply . Good to see people questioning , and giving thought to “why” a design is the way it is , and what they like / could modify in it to make it different / “better?”

…Jeff Ho’s swallowtail with hip , and plugs , makes sense to me!

Notice the shallowness of the SWALLOWTAIL , compared to the depth of a FISHTAIL .

…And that the plugs are , of course , more toed-in to the nose than on a “twin keel fish” . I would still try that board with a twin keel setup as well , though … just to ‘feel’ the difference (with maybe a 3x3" trailer fin , too.)

Conversely , I am still a BIG fan of SINGLE fin fish… and , ‘bonzer3’ and ‘widowmaker-type’ setups on fish [featuring : a bigger back single fin sized fin ,with smaller side fins , and with the back edges of the side fins / runners overlapping the leading edge of the big [‘back’] / single fin .]

Where this is going for me with my “Bushfire Fish” , I think , is to put a back plug BEHIND my existing back fin box …

…to allow a truer thruster fin setup positioning of the back fin. Also to possibly finally try Wildy’s “inline single” fin setup , too …

to be continued …

ben

please keep the replies and design thinking coming on this , guys …

…and , keep questioning WHY fish “have” to be so straight railed and have such a wide and deep fishtail , too thick , too wide , too flat , with "GLASSED ON “twin keels” , now we are not kneeboarding them much any more . [Of course , I realise they don’t “HAVE” to be this way , unless people particularly have those sort of waves to ride them in , but I am just hoping people think about this , and maybe try some “aberrations” [ besides double winged quads.]

…“Chasing Lefts” , where are you on this ???

Chip-I think that your train of thought is heading toward the double bump Pavel/Mandala style of fish, ie a traditional fish outline with the tail pulled in significantly by having a double cutaway tail outline. The tips on most of these style of boards are about 8" apart, to help with hold in steeper, hollower waves, seems to be along the lines of what you’re envisioning.

(Both boards by Mandala Custom Shapes, used entirely without permission, sorry but they’re beautiful!)


Chip,

Not a technical answer - more of semantics… What’s with “butt crack”? These are surfboards we’re talking about, not plumbers…

I know it’s an area on a specific style board that’s never had a hard and fast “name” per say. I have always known it as “crotch” or “split” which - outside of deviant minds - are from a woodworking/craftsman vernacular. Or, even if you are coming from the deviant slant, at least come closer to the curvy sensuous female form - which a finely crafted board comes alot closer to emulating than some hairy ass wrench twister with a too small t-shirt.

I only bring it up because I love surfboards and “butt crack” just sounds like a kook term - to me at least.

Pete

[=1]

Quote:

[ 3]I think a big plus with the old style big butt crack is that when you lay the thing on a rail, it’s a rail line like a pintails that’s in the water you have the great feel of acceleration [/]

my 2c - i have to agree with the two pintails idea, thats what i thought (had been told) all along - on the steep part of a wave only one rail is working with one fin like a pintail - the other side is still in the water but not doing much and with the fins being parallel the other fin doesn’t cause drag like a a toe’d in set up would, this makes it possible for a wide rear which makes catching waves esier - was out on my 5’6 G&S this morning in waist high waves catching more waves than the longboarders :o)

the tips of my ones are just under 12" and the butt crack is 4"

[/]

thanks Cody !

To me , that “butt crack” is still a wee bit deep , and the box a bit to far forward , on the blue one …why ???

Perhaps it’s the tail THICKNESS ? [in which case , thin the tail , lengthen the board [if need be?] and put in back plugs . I have let the [?“too thick”?] tail determine where I place the back box in the past . But I think I would rather have a little thinner tail / finer tuned rails , than a box too far forward , that doesn’t really properly allow me to try all five fin setup options . But that’s just me …not everyone will like the extra tail weight [ANOTHER reason to make the tail thinner …a bit lighter !], or so many options , perhaps ?!

Tail options …

…I still find the wider diamond tails a bit too wide , for my liking …if the rail line was extended , a narrower diamond [and a bit more length in the board ] would be some things that I would enjoy .

For example … if THIS board had not already been a “fish” outline , I would have liked to have shaped a narrower diamond tail , around 5-6" maximum width …and a few inches longer in the outline would have been nice for me , to …say, 6’2 instead of it ending up a 5’7 [!] stubbie …

cheers

 ben
Quote:

Chip,

Not a technical answer - more of semantics… What’s with “butt crack”? These are surfboards we’re talking about, not plumbers…

beats me , mate …

I had never heard the expression here in Oz . I just read it here , and at surfer mag forums !

hey ben,

as you know, the most effective tail(for cleanest release down the rail) is a square. the next is a swallow. the difference being that with a square tail you have added planing area. the swallow(butt crack) release the pressure under the tail, and sits deeper in the water providing more holding power - which is why so many tow in boards, and semi-guns are swallows.

as to the width of the tips, they are wide to allow the somewhat straighter rail line that provides the fish platform so much speed(along with flat rocker of course.) if you pull in the tail a bit, creating a rounder outline, you may lose some speed by gaining turnung ability.

i imagine that the reason behind the wide tip with, and deep crack, was to maximize planing area, but have added wave penetration to help control alll the speed.

anyway, my input, hope it helps.

i thought you were on leave?

Instead of buttcrack how about cleavage.

cleavage is in front. how about " 'taint? "

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cleavage is in front. how about " 'taint? "

cleavage sounds better - if its at the back it could be “bum cleavage” as in builders bum