I think these boards take advantage of the shorter radius tail curve. Makes me think of riding a skateboard from the back foot. You’re able to make really quick short radius turns because there’s an inverted rail between the feet. Probably best suited for surf breaks that you need to make a lot of quick turns, and smaller to head high surf. Also probably better for surfers that favor their back foot. That is probably a younger generation that is used to short boards with stomp pads, and always having their back foot planted on the tail.
I think that taking away the rail may affect the ability to make those longer driving turns older surfers riding longer boards are used to. It probably wouldn’t feel right for someone who rides their board from further up or in the middle. No full rail turns from these boards.
Those pics dont make sense to me. at traditional shape the water hits wide point in the middle and creating pressure there, while at sidecut when the water hits wide point in the back nothing happens ? actually it looks like there is even less pressure than everywhere else…
I was working nearly 20 years as a snowboard shaper and I see here some potential to explore, but what was the most annoying on the snowboard - widening rear part when you ride a pow. I sucsesfylly decreased that by rotating radiuses, thus tapering shape, in some cases up to the extreme , where in the back you have nearly paralel rails, still maintaining clean, tight , under 7 meters radius.
Somehow everyone has forgotten about mad scientist Tom Morey’s Swizzle. My brother has been a devoted follower of his crazy ideas since the early ‘70s. He bought a 9’ swizzle several years ago, but I don’t think either of us has ridden it. About the time he got it, he a series of health issues that took a couple years to get over. When he showed it to me I thought it was heavy, and I didn’t like riding 9’ boards so I didn’t try it. I think it’s time to give it a try. This article is from 2000. http://articles.latimes.com/2000/feb/24/sports/sp-2275
Something else to think about, take a good look at Dan Mann’s boards and see how the sidecut is milder, and the nose is closer to his other boards (not like a penis). In his interviews he says how they had to adjust the initial designs Firewire was given 4 times to make the Cornice, and Mankine boards are a little different from the Firewires. There’s a lot of stuff going on with the rails, how the deck thickness varies, and some of the bottoms too. Same with the Swizzle, there’s a lot more than just the sidecut outline.
here’s the text for those that don’t want to click out of swaylocks:
New Wave
Morey’s Latest Creation, the Swizzle, Gives High-Performance Ride
February 24, 2000|JOHN WEYLER | SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
The assignment: Test ride Boogie Board inventor Tom Morey’s revolutionary new surfboard, the Swizzle.
Beats work, right?
Well, most of the time, but consider these contributing factors:
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There’s a stormy, very bumpy four- to six-foot west swell slamming into the rocky beach at the end of Thalia Street in Laguna Beach. “Biggest day I’ve seen this winter,” says Morey, who now goes by “Y.”
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The water temperature is 56 degrees and you’re wearing a light, sleeveless wetsuit because 65-year-old Y said he was wearing his spring suit.
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Oh, and as we embark on this little surf safari, Y mentions that he didn’t bother to bring leashes, because, after all, “it’s only a beach break, just right there and back out.”
He grinds the manual transmission of his well-worn Toyota 4Runner into reverse and slips into his “secret parking spot,” a space in an alley in front of a garage with a huge No Parking, Tow Away Zone sign plastered on the door.
“The caretaker lets me park here,” says Y, who changed his name to disassociate himself from the old days and start anew. (Why Y? “Why not?” he answers.)
There is a pause at the top of the stairs to check out the waves. Thirty years ago, this would have been a fun way to spend a morning.
“Sure you want to do this?” Y asks.
At least there’s only the ocean to battle. No one else is out.
The 9-foot 4-inch Swizzle paddles like a board a foot longer, which is a pleasant surprise when you’re stroking toward an outside set. The board is squeezable, which is a really nice feeling when you’re leashless and you just flipped upside down under a collapsing 10-foot face and are hanging onto the rails with all your less-than-considerable might. This aspect of the board’s performance was tested time and again on this morning. The soft deck also makes knee paddling a delight for 51-year-old knees and feet.
Misshapen waves come from all angles in overlapping chunks, and numb limbs further limit already limited talent. Y manages to get a few nose rides and the other Swizzle performs admirably through a bottom turn or two.
Skilled wave riders, who have tested the board in far better conditions, give the board rave reviews. “It’s fast, it cuts back good, tracks high and nose rides like a dream,” said Donald Gardner, who’s been surfing since 1959. “It’s really impressive.”
The Swizzle, which sells for $650 and can only be purchased online at http://www.starwaves.com, is the result of an ingeniously simple spin on surfboard design and production techniques that have remained basically the same for half a century. A few key differences make this relatively normal-looking board a more durable, safer, high-performance vehicle.
Its construction is similar to traditional surfboards: foam covered with fiberglass. The Swizzle’s core, however, is made of polypropylene foam, the kind of stuff that’s inside your car’s bumper. And you can run over it with your car and it won’t lose its shape. (Y’s son, Matt, says he proved it, but don’t tell Dad).
The Swizzle is coated with a thin, four-ounce layer of specially treated fiberglass designed to bond with a resin that dries in a flexible state, able to give with the foam. Bands of layered wood and plastic are inlaid down the center of the top and bottom–they look like a traditional stringer–to add strength and stiffness. The tail and nose blocks are rubber.
There are also two significant design innovations. The rails on the tail are shaped just like those on a Boogie Board, allowing the board to hold onto the face of the wave with one small fin, reducing drag. “I’m embarrassed it took me 20 years to think of it,” said Y, who sold his first Boogie Board in 1971. “It was like, duh.”
The board curves in two inches at the waist; the hourglass shape is designed to free the board for quicker turns (giving it “swivel”) and increased speed (the “sizzle”). Hence the name Swizzle.
Y first saw the design more than a decade ago in a surfboard shaped by Dick Velzy. “We are all still within the design shadow of that great man,” Y says. "He is the pioneer of this business.
“I don’t have ideas, I copy ideas, like I copied English from my parents.”
None of these design innovations would have made much of an impact if the Swizzle had not been competitive in one key area: weight. Modern surfboard shoppers do not buy heavy boards. Swizzles weigh between 14 and 16 pounds, slightly lighter than most conventional longboards. Still, Y scoffs at most recreational surfers’ obsession with light boards.
“The average person can easily turn a 25-pound board,” he says. "In an era of 25-pound boards, Phil Edwards [considered by many the best surfer of his time in the late 1950s] rode a 43-pound board. Joel Tudor [1998 world champion longboarder] recently told me his favorite board weighs 34 1/2 pounds. You can run up to the nose, spin around and get back before the board knows what’s happened.
“The intermediate surfer lives in a fantasy world. This fetish with light boards has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with having to carry it from the car to the surf.”
At least if you drop this board in the parking lot, it won’t ding.
And that’s really what Surfboards by Y is all about–design, materials and applying today’s technology to the surfboard industry. Y says he’s issuing a wake-up call to the industry.
He was raised in Laguna Beach, using these same rocky beaches as a proving ground, and graduated from USC with degrees in mathematics and music. He worked for Douglas Aircraft as an engineer and played drums in a jazz band.
More than 20 million Boogie Boards have been sold in the past 30 years, but he’s not a millionaire and doesn’t want to be. He left his consultant job with Wham-O Corp.–which owns the Morey name and bodyboard products–to return to the garage below his modest home in Capistrano Beach where he his wife, Marchia, live with three of his six children.
The Surfboards by Y factory is an extended one-car garage. And the CEO/guru has no grand plans for expansion.
“I’m a surfer, a designer and an engineer,” he says, "but I abhor business. We’re in spiritual trouble on this planet. It’s all backward. It’s not about the money.
“I’ve ridden a thousand surfboards, everything I could borrow, and this board is just an extension of all of that. There’s no magic here. In the end, this is just another high-performance longboard that’s user friendly, won’t ding nearly as easily, will last virtually forever and is hopefully safer.”
And you don’t have to be hit over the head to figure out it’s more than just another longboard.
“The intermediate surfer lives in a fantasy world. This fetish with light boards has nothing to do with performance and everything to do with having to carry it from the car to the surf.”
That’s why I didn’t try it.
My brother’s board is standard construction not the lighter boogey board materials. Time to man up (Mann?) and give it a go if he still has it.
This also has me thinking… I can’t carry boards that are 22" wide or more comfortably under my arm. Maybe an undercut rail on a longboard or short longboard will be the answer.
the man himself weighed in on Swaylocks, on a thread started by Mr. Swaylocks himself, how cool is that?
cool aid for all
Drink it up…
life without kool aide
We made a few back in the seventies. They were single fins around 6’6" or so. They rode OK but nothing to rave about. The concept has been around forever.
The next step needs to be some out of the box thinking on fin shapes. All I have seen is the same old various versions of a fish dorsal fin.
if someone posts a fish they made on sways, comments don’t seem to say “this idea has been around forever”. i think the same should apply here. in the dan mann interview, he’s VERY clear that the sidecut thing wasn’t his idea. he just tried to expand on it. same w/ sk8ment.
cleanlines and all who have actually ridden shapes like this, i really appreciate hearing your experience since you have actually been on them in the water. when you say “they rode OK”, i find that really cool…the fact it was rideable is interesting enough.
i’ve never ridden a sidecut board, i don’t know when i’d ever have the chance to ride one, but i do love the experimentation, refining of designs and sharing of build/ride reports, especially by local members on here.
[edit] - sharkcountry, your swizzle post/info is fantastic, too!
Obviously you have added something extra to your Kool Aid Stungray.
I have been a severe critic, regretably, to the point of being rude, of the side cut design. We had good fun a few years ago with the Meyerhoffer peanut shape here in a thread best left hidden. But.
But. (And I know we are talking above about extreme sidecut…). But, I have been riding a 5-10 Dan Mann board he calls the “short game”. Big fat tail to get this 65 year old body in early and a modest side cut. Loose enough for me. And very speedy. I like it. I like it a lot.
I will never have a side cut long board. Just saying.
All the best
I’m trying to figure out how to get a Short Game down here in Australia to go with my Cornice. I need a good groveler and this would be the perfect transition!
sharkcountry
I can only speak for the Cornice and personal experience. You are correct on the back foot thing. In regards to “smaller to head high surf” - quite the opposite as it starts really performing at Waist (only if the wave has grunt) to well overhead - it does not grovel!
Also it does long drawn out turns no problem at all - just not in the same way us old blokes have been used to.
Like I said earlier - the most efficient, easy to surf board I’ve ever owned.
keep drinking that cool aid. The sugar will get you one day.
I’m not chasing the ultimate design because I already found it.
And it’s not shaped like a dong.
Hey Stingray seems like you’re a little obsessed with penises aren’t you - are you sure you’re on the right forum?
Geez thanks Huck. Much appreciated.