When does a curvy minimal become an egg? When does a long, squash-tailed egg become a minimal? What other design aspects differentiate one from the other?
As an aside - Can a Minimal ever be a truly satisfying surfboard (slightly glib here)?
Edit - thanks for replies everyone.
It appears that as I have not posted anything for a while, I now need ‘points’ to respond in line in the thread!
Back on topic - is it just semantics? I dare not veer into the stubby/hull argument, John!
Does anyone feel that any design is ‘too much’ of a compromise? Neither ‘fish nor fowl’? (Hence my Minimal remark)
The first (circa 1970) Steve Lis Fish I ever saw, was 6 feet long, by 20 or 21 inches wide. He thought it was a Fish. Hell, he said it was a Fish. You’d think he’d know, eh?
I would say an egg fills the gap between a longboard and a fish. I use my longboard in sub hip height perfect peelers. Between hip height and chest height, particularly if it’s fairly gutless or not very perfect, I’ll be thinking about an egg. Chest to head height is generally a fish, unless it’s hollow, in which case the shortboard kicks in. I’m actually surfing my shortboard a lot more these days in everything from hip height to double over head. To my mind a mini mal is probably fairly redundant these days, unless you’re a learner.
‘To my mind a mini mal is probably fairly redundant these days, unless you’re a learner.’
I guess this is what I’m getting at - do some planshapes and designs have more ‘worth’ than others? Has the potential of the humble Minimal been stifled by its ‘learner board’ reputation?
I guess it depends on how many boards you have. A mini mal could cover the space held by a longboard, egg, fish combination. personally if I had to choose between one of those three I’d go for the egg.
I have trawled through various eggy threads and still no defining features stand out, aside from a rough approximation that eggs can come in wider range of sizes and there are clearly some polar opposites in extremes of planshape for each design, but once they get closer to one another, then…?
I guess I was just postulating over the inherent value we place on certain designs over others and the answer to that was summed up pretty succinctly in that video clip of Mike Eaton.
My feeling that the egg commonly has more credence as a design than a minimal is fairly apparent in responses. Just curious to suss out why that may be, I guess…
…with that reasoning you would think that a shortboard with a rounded nose is a mini malibu or egg; but is not…
You have like fish designs, older eggs and new eggs; normally you can see plenty of new but retro eggs…but that s the same than the old ones but new.
In Brazil mostly those boards are called hybrids. These malibus have the same tail block as an small shortboard, the same fin config, the same rails, same tail rocker, etc
Eggs do have another stuff there; another outline another rocker and most important another thickness in tail block; different bottom contours too; and a long etc but think about it and you ll find good conclusions.
The traditional California egg design is a singlefin with no corners or points and a lowish rocker. It’s not a cut down noserider with the popscicle stick template and a squash tail, and it’s not a fat shortboard.