Hey everyone,
just wanted to add this to the archive because it would have helped me out years ago when I started building.
I am a true lover of 50/50 rails. I like the rails hard in the tail and soft up front. The best of both worlds because there is no chatter but the board still has drive. If you don’t plan on surfing verticle I feel that this is the most functional surfboard rail design.
I am posting to tell you that a modern 50/50 rail isn’t mathmatically 50/50. If you take a board with a flat deck and a flat bottom that is 3 inches thick, and find the 1.5 inch mark and make that your rail apex, the board will still be a little slow in the end, no matter how elegantly you pinch it out.
A “50/50” rail is a rail with a bit of softness to it, but the apex is roughly .5 inches below the 1.5 mark on a 3 inch thick board. In other words, it’s 1 inch to 1.25 inches up from the bottom of a square rail. It’s not 1.5 inches.
After my last board, which rides great, I was getting frustrated with my rails because the board was still just a little bit sticky. I then measured my 6’10 liddle, and my 9’2 anderson farberow, the only foam boards I own, and the only boards I own made by somebody other than myself. The 6’10 liddle is 3.25 thick and the apex is 1 inch up from the bottom. The anderson is about 3 inches thick and the apex is 1.25 inches up from the bottom.
Both of these boards are top of the line made by professionals with far more experience than me, and both of them have “50/50” rails.
Anyway, I have been making boards for probably 5 years now, and more than half of them have been wood, so it took me a while to come to that conclusion because wood is what you make of it. It’s not like a blank that comes with deck curve and all that, which in the end makes a 50/50 rail a bit lower than center anyway due to the nature of the curve.
SO that’s for the archvies for anybody looking for some sleek 50/50 rails. Lower your apex just a bit. If you are using a surfboard blank, it works out that way anyway because your deck is already domed.
Thanks.