thanks tubedog, im flattered by the tag…
but im actually gonna give the title ,guru’s guru to tom …
tom is the best at packing the most amount of meaning into the fewest words…
its my personal opinion he has the best overall understanding of surfing design concepts of anyone ive come across…
every conversation ive ever had with tom , hes right there , in the same square millimeter ,always knows exactly what im talking or asking about…
ok here come the long winded bert version…
theres some combinations in surfboard design that are ugly…
ive given the same fins to 10 different team guys 7 come back raving,2 come back with “im not sure” and 1 comes back “yuk worst fins ever” even tho i thought they were the best???
so then you look at boards and styles of surfers and theres common denominators …
when you toe fins in a little more , they kick you into the turn a little later ,(like your waiting longer for your board to respond)…
also a fuller foil when it does get an angle of attack will kick in hard and provide plenty of pull into the turn, so you get a good tight hook…
these type of fins can bring some boards to life…
but on other boards it exaggerates there flaws…
like tom said , a hard edge will release water , so when you go into a turn , water will squirt off one rail helping to initiate the turn,(compensating for delayed fin reaction)…
outline curve plays a roll here as well , a little more outline curve will also help the board respond a little quicker,(another wild guess would conclude the board you didnt like the fins in had a generic clean outline?)
and like tom i concluded you like to use the back foot through turns…
a fuller fin suits guys who like to bury the back foot ,they enjoy the hold /bite/and hook the fins give…
surfers who like to power up the back foot through turns, really hate boards with to much tail rocker…coz when they weight up the curved part of the rocker it slows down , leaving you motionless after your turn if youve lingered on the back foot to long…
but because you had a fin with more toe you have to stay weighted into the turn a little longer to get the response…
it basically came down to power of deduction , i knew what type of board those fins worked well in ,plus what they didnt work well in , thats why i asked if it wasnt like what i decribed , then how was it set up …i saw a potential opportunity to learn something…
so after all that , plus reading between the lines a little , if you want to keep using those fins and get some real squirt out of turns ,run a flater tail rocker with real hard edges almost up to half way ,normally a little slipperey but the fuller fins will compensate and give the bite and hold you want…make sure you curve the outline a little especially in the tail ,thats to compensate for the flater rocker…
ok im not tom ,so the flow with words isnt quite the same ,but in amongst the seeming collection of random comments will be the information you need …
tom while your close by i wanted to start a subject up on the vectored drag experienced by thrusters,how it relates to toe ,camber,concaved foils,fin size,cant…
i think i know the one basic thing that creates all the drag on thruster set ups…the work i did with concaved foils really cleared things up for me…
ive run out of time now …i think ill start another thread on it coz we lost the last one to roy…hopefully his speed surfing thread will keep him sidetracked for a while…
anyway tom id really appreciate your feed back when i post the theory…
im hoping youve already figured it , but if you havent …its one of those things where you say “of coarse , why didnt i think of that…” ill have to some drawings to make it super clear…
ok im out till next time…
regards
BERT