I have noticed a couple longboards I took a close look at lately have got a subtle but very definite “belly” or convex down the entire length of the board (turning into more of a V out the tail).
What is the purpose, how does it affect performance?
Ok Huck I’ll put my neck in the noose.
I use convex to V in most of my boards. I find I can hide the thickness better on my thicker boards. I also like the smoother rolling fits in the wave, part of the wave feel. And with some thickness still seem to ride on top of the water. The convex, you have to be careful on how much, helps lead into the turns and the V AND properly shaped rail give you something to add punch out of the turn. Mainly I like the “feel” . Concave mid section bottoms ride flat and seem to have to be pumped too much to make em work. Convex seem to do the work for you with just subtle weight adjustments. I guess kind of old school but it is what works for me.
I have adapted some of this stuff to some pretty short boards to my longer stuff and have had lots of happy riders. Not for hippy hoppy pump pump over gyrating crowd. More of a flow and go feel.
…the rolled bottoms are slow but cool for the flow “thingy” , like Ace mentioned. I only shape those in the big eggs with 30/70s and 50/50 s rails; but mostly I use them on the first 24" then a slight concave then the V.
I think that with a heavily rockered board is a great combo for eggs that will be surfed on slow pointbreaks or mellow waves where the rider know how to deal with his hip and knees…
I handbuilt this one last month:
man reverb, Huie and Your boards always look right. I like the way you can roll a board with belly from the ankles up and down the face. Really subtle adjustments on a flatter kind wave. Dora was the best at it I.M.O.
That’s a beauty Reverb.
“rolled bottoms are slow”
I disprove that daily. So do some other pretty well known surfers in my area.
The amount of “convex” is critical. Too much and you get a piggie just right and you get something that works quite well. With the right combo of V or in my case V that went to far { check out my “new year new board new fin” discussion}, you get some pretty nice results. But I am sure that some are gonna say this is not current “high performance” surfing whatever that is. I definitely would not say my boards were slow I take off pretty far back and seem to make em. And the waves I ride are not always “slow”.
less rocker with roll the better.
…thanks Maka and Surfifty.
Ace, if you put a rolled bottom on a HPSB you slow down it for sure.
I use that slight concave in the middle, under rider stance, to prevent that thing on the other type of boards.
Matt, gobs of rocker works very good on eggs for pointbreaks if the rider know techniques.
Ace, if you put a rolled bottom on a HPSB you slow down it for sure.
I am not talking about lots of roll like old style longboards, even though some of them were pretty fast, I am talking about subtle “convex” bottom with a “modern” tucked edge rail. This is a bottom pretty similar to 70’s-80’s bigger wave guns and longboards like I used to shape for Eaton. He/we had a pretty refined complex bottom rocker rail shape that had a slight convex bottom. These boards were not known for being “low performance” or slow. My newer stuff is a continuation of something other than ‘‘asymmetric’’ outlines, that I was doing years before they became “in”, that I got from Carl Ekstrom. We were talking one day and he said he liked surfboards that looked “inflated” BOOM a light bulb went off in my head. Take a “modern” surfboard and soften things up like it was inflated but keep some hard square edges where needed and see what happens. I have been incorporating this philosophy into my boards for several years and it really opened up some interesting doors.Try it you might like it.
No more time for this heading south to put em to the test. Ciao
See "Loaded Dome" thread.
Roll in front 3/4 going to flat tail. Soft edges. low rocker. classic. Also need some weight. Cruisin at its best. Timeless classic.
really? i've been riding low rockered, round bottomed boards for decades. once the rocker get beyond certain parameters, they don't work. ie, they are slower than hell.btw, i grew up and live in a land of right points so i have a pretty good idea of what works in point breaks and what doesn't. now, for a longboard, some more tail rocker(with low nose rocker) is what seems to work in the points around here...
…please, show me photos of those HPSBs.
With the eggs, that by the way are shorter than a longboard, that more rocker on the last 1/3 is what you say that also works for you on longer boards…; but en egg can be more rocker on the nose due to more hot dog moves than a longboard, so those compounds of curves and hip and knee riding techniques is a very good combo; tested and proved.