So this past weeken it finally peaked my curiosity as to why no longboards (at least those i’ve seen) use hard edge rails like those found on some of the high performance shortboards. Ya know, how they are flat on rail with hard edegs that eventually smooth into nice round edges about 19" to 24" up. Why is this? Can it be done? I can’t imagine I’m some revolutionary thinker which is why i’ve posted the question here. Thanks
Christian, There are some longboards with harder rails most of the way up, but they usually have other design features that come into play to soften the effect. One example is the Walden Magic Model:A good little edge in conjunction with a chine. Longboards have lots of rail in the water as compared to a shortboard. Keeping in mind that sharp-edged rails “grab” the energy of the wave, it’s harder to control a long, edgey rail of a longboard as opposed to the relatively short rail of a shortboard. One of my early boards (9’8")was too down railed, and on fast, hollow waves, the wave would tend to grab the rail and flip the board. Talk about being in the Spin Cycle! Doug
Howzit Christian, Most of the long boards I glass have hard rails as far up as 20" from the tail. The reason being the type of waves in our area. We all know that Hawaiin waves move faster and so we need a harder rail to hold to the face of the wave. I’m doing a board now that the owner wants a hard rail to extend from the tail to 18" forward of the front FCS rail plug. Ghunt was here for a visit a week or so ago and one thing he noticed was the hard rails on the boards we make here. He also said that the mainland boards seem to be more of a classic style shape with softer rails in the tail area. Harder rails on slower waves would probably affect the looseness of the board.Aloha, Kokua
With a longboard that has full length hard down rails, use more rocker with a rounder template. Adding chines is a good idea, too.
The boards vary here on the mainland, but I found it hard to find a soft rail / traditional 50/50 rail board over on the islands. It makes sense. In general the waves over there demand more performance oriented boards - shortboards & longboards alike. Therefore harder rails are key at those north shore breaks where you need drive, grip & control through turns, and overall speed through the tube. There was a thread about the Bing Nuuhiwa Lightweight, a late 60’s longboard. I’ve heard great things about this longboard design so I scoped one out recently. That model had practically a down rail line that extended to the tip of the nose. My guess is the board would naturally take a higher line on a given wave. I’d like to hear more about it.