nose rails

General Discussion
1

There’s a lot of info on tail rails and water flow in the archives, but not much on nose rails and how they work.

I hadn’t been giving any attention to rails in the front of the board (board #1 I just went for 60/40 rails from the centre to the nose). Then recently saw an article on Surfline where Brewer was talking about making a board for Jeff Hakman who wanted low rails in the nose at a time when they were doing what Brewer called high rails in the nose.

Brewer was referring to the genesis of semi or mini guns when he mentioned nose rails. I’d like to know why he thought it was so important to have low rails all the way through the board. Lopez also talks about this as a breakthrough, but in the articles I’ve read never really explains why.

2

Claude,

There is a guy who surfs at Cardiff Reef who has several boards by Tyler Hatzikian. One of them has down rails in the nose, and it looks like the board is backwards when you first see it in the water. A lot of people comment on it, and the guy who surfs it says that even though it looks odd, it surfs well.

My guess is that when the nose engages the water, it probably planes instead of plows through the water.

Doug

3

plane over the water without getting sucked in or bogged down.

important in bigger waves.

nice on logs, too.