Sorry reverb, I couldn’t find that thread, so I don’t know what you were asking or proposing in it.
Remember I was talking about board from 30 to 40 years ago. Not todays single fins. Surely a bigger fin can help hold a board in better. But it also creates some problems. As always the key is balancing each feature against another such that the combination achieves what one is looking for. My comments in this thread were primarily limited to older single fin designs with low rocker. My comments shouldn’t be considered an endorsement of low rocker or praise for those older board designs. They were just what they were in their time. They were far from perfect. They were just what things had evolved to at that point. I should also note that I don’t want to leave out Lopez and before him Phil Edwards who pioneered the “Pipeliner” template that many of my 70’s Pipeline boards had.
Some history lessons are needed here. If you look at the the boards just proceeding the 70s boards, you will see that they were substantially different. This is that history thing that I said I didn’t have time for, so here is the short version.
Take for example, the Phil Edwards Pipeliner. These had very little rocker over all and very little in the tail. In their foil, the tails were thick and the noses where thin and bellied. The template was a hippy pintail, a precursor, to what Gerry and I were making and riding in the 70’s. But these were in many ways still “cut down” long boards, retaining wider noses and tails with parallel mid points. These early short boards, had low rocker because most of the rocker in long boards was in the tail and most people who cut down old long boards to make shorter boards, cut off the tails, which removed most of the rocker. And being less knowledgable backyard builders, they didn’t realize what they were removing the rocker. Rocker, I might add, that was desperately needed to make them work right!
These low rockered, thick tailed boards didn’t turn very easily, so they had to have as little fin area as possible so that they would turn. Problem was, this would allow the boards to spin out. A huge problem back then. Especially in hollower waves. So these boards evolved very long and very swept back fins to hold them in. But this made them too hard to turn, so the fins area was cut away until they were extremely narrow, such that they would allow less resistance to turning but still penetrate deep enough and flex a bit, to limit spinning out.
By the early 70’s things changed radically. Surfers were looking for more radical surfing closer to the curl and in the steeper parts of the wave, rather then just doing poses on the nose so popular in the 60’s. Therefore, nose rockers increased and tails got a bit more rocker in them too. Not enough yet, but more then before. But without enough rocker, spinning out was still a problem. So in an attempt to fix this, the foils in these boards totally reversed and now became thin in the tails and thicker in the nose. Plus tails also got narrower in an attempt to stop the spinning out problem and to gain more control of the board by the rider, rather then the rider just launching into the wave and like a rodeo rider, trying to handle whatever the board and wave threw at him.
With these narrower, thinner tails more control was gained because they sat down deeper in the water and that coupled with still not having enough rocker still made them hard to turn and able to spin out from time to time. So once again the fins were modified to aid turning. Then became shorter, more vertical (less rake) and wider. This helped turning a lot but didn’t solve the spin out problem. In fact, some became so small that controlled spin outs or “side slips” actually became popular “maneuvers” for awhile. Most of this stayed the same throughout the 70’s though rockers did increase slightly and performance continued to improve. Fins also got longer with more rake as the rockers increased.
BUT… these designs didn’t work at all in small waves and as pro surfing grew, and winning mattered more then “soul surfing” a solution was needed. Since these contests were mostly held in small junk waves, it required boards that could ride tiny junk waves. This caused the focus to rapidly shift off of Hawaii and Hawaiian board designs, and back toward wide tailed boards for small waves. But then, spinning out began to raise its head once again. Hence the rebirth of the twin fins, 4 fins and eventually the tri fin.
The original, twin fin of 1970 was a clear indication that the industry and surfers knew what they needed but it didn’t last long enough to get refined into the multi fin options we have today. Mostly because Hawaii’s surf scene burst on the scene with a vengeance. The media and contests were totally focused on Hawaii with such power that people were riding Hawaiian guns in small California and east coast surf! Sad really. But that is the power of magazines, great photos from the likes of Steve Wilkins and dramatic contests in the majestic waves of Hawaii. Had muti fined boards gotten sorted out properly in the early 70’a, we could have skipped right past the 70’s single finned boards and right into the multi finned boards of the 80’s!
But these Hawaiian boards, not working well elsewhere, sparked another profound shift as it caused surfboard outline templates to reverse again. The 70’s narrow tails and wide noses, became in the 80’s… wide tails and narrow noses. Foils also began to reverse with thinner noses and thicker tails becoming the norm.
We were heading right back to the late 60’s! But this time it was different! With the addition of more fins, spinning out was no longer a problem. This allowed surfers to ride in much more critical areas of the wave without losing control. And in those areas of the waves, it was finally apparent that previous lower rockers, were woefully too flat to fit into these spaces. Consequentially, rockers rapidly increased. As did overall performance and there was no spinning out problems to stop this process from continuing. In fact, once again, spinning out, because it could be controlled, become an accepted part of contemporary surfing. We don’t “spin out” anymore, we spin in circles and get famous for doing so!
There is much more to this history and many players involved I don’t have time now to include everyone nor was that my purpose. I was just trying to point out that “not enough rocker” drove all kinds of attempts to solve the problem and had we just got the rocker thing sorted out, we could have bypassed a bunch of needless steps to where we are now. But surfing is funny that way. It got addicted to speed and rightfully so as it is the primary force we need to be able to surf. Somewhere it got stuck on “flatter tail rocker” as a necessary component to create this speed instead of just putting the boards in the more powerful places on the waves from which tons of “speed” could be generated. More to tell here if there were time.
I don’t disagree with this. It all depends on what standard you use to determine if a board is good, bad or excellent. The surfer decides. Some are knowledgable enough to know, some aren’t. But as long as they are happy or think they are happy with the board. Then the board is good.
I can see you have some theory here about 50/50 rails. I don’t really know what your theory is or even for sure what the rails are that you call 50/50. So I can’t fairly comment. Other then to say that no one I know uses 50/50 rails on any boards, let alone big wave guns. A 50/50 rail in my view is one where the apex of the curve is dead center of the thickness of the board. And usually, the curves into and out of that point are very similar as they flow into the deck or bottom. Is this what a 50/50 rail is to you reverb?