I just finished a 9’8 10oz volon… uss. HEAVY…I think I put pinched rails on it but Im not sure what pinched rails are…the porpose of these rails was to make the board forgiving but allow it track in a steep wave…the sharpest part of the rail is about 1/2 way up… like you would pinch clay .I have never seen pinched rails, all the boards around here are the standard 30 deg.fred tool rails or 50/50?rails
Pretend your board is sitting in the racks on edge…If the lower rail looks like V then it is pinched. If it looks like U, its not…
A little pinch is good, too much pinch and it will dig a rail. We found that out back in the 60s. I think the CJ Nelson model that Arrow makes is just about as much as you can pinch the rails and not have them dig. I like just a little less. A true 50/50 rail can be pinched or called a egg rail, not the big end of the egg but the small end of the rail. That is the rail that I really like egg.
Leev,
Is that kind of like a chine? Where the bottom edge of the rail looks like a “v” (angle compared to the bottom…) coming up off the bottom of the board?
Sean W.
No a chine is something eles complety. A chine is something to make the bottom of the board not as wide as it really is. If that makes any since to you? A chine on the bottom of the board will make the board turn like it is not as wide it will go rail to rail easier then a board, that is just as wide without a chine. I have also been told that it will hold the face of the wave better. I don’t see many boards with a chine anymore. Maybe it does not work as well as everyone though.
I have a LB from G.Loehr that is less than 6 months old and it has chines,channels ,the whole works on the bottom. A 9’2" high performance board. I understand that it makes it more forgiving and get from rail to rail easier. I love the board,fast ,loose and forgiving. So can someone put up a pic or better describe the “pinched” rails? Curious…
Go to the refriger, remove one egg from the carton. Hold the egg in the air with the small end of the egg pointing up. That is what a pinched 50/50 rail looks like. Turn the egg around so that the larger end is up that is a soft, 50/50 rail.
Oh,simple enough. So the only rails that can be “pinched” are 50-50 rails ?
As far as I know that is true. The pinched rail were an attemp to make the rail hold the face of a stepper wave. The tucked rail was what they ended up with. It is my feeling, and I repeat my feeling that we here in CA do not have many wave faces that really need a tucked rail on a long board. If you look at newer short boards they have started softing up the rail in the nose and mid area and are only tucking the rail in the tail area.
Bagman is right in my opinion.You can’t get a true pinched rail on a modern flat bottom,you need a lot of roll or “belly” to get it right.Phil Edwards took this to the max with his “knife” rails.
The rail on the uss HEAVY is like this it looks like a slanted V…I teated this and I really like them it hold very well in steep sand bar grinders…itsa 9’8 and really is not that heavy I make fun of it cuz it smokes on the water and makes sections that the shorties cant… the sections that get alive inside…I dont get the turned down 30 deg. magic number thing…if the surface you plane on is steep…wouldnt you want your rails to be in the wave “face directly”?