I have been toying around with the idea lately of throwing a skateboard styled kick-tail on a shortboard to enhance aerials. I have a Santa Cruz G-Deck that has a LITTLE kick in the tail, but it doesnt seem like enough to make a difference.
http://www.santacruzsurfboards.com/gdeck/
Basically I am thinking of a similar board to the G-Deck (stepped deck with thinner rails) but with a much more exaggerated kick in the tail (tail thickness hits over 2.5 inches at height of the kick). The tail rocker will remain largely the same, and the tail before the sloped up kick will be very thin for flex (however this will be the boards “weak” point, and likely the site for breaks). I was thinking of a board like this in Coil construction, as it seems stronger and will allow the tail more flex at the thin point before the kick.
Is this concept feasable? Has there been any other ideas/tail pads/shapes that have helped address this issue? Would I be better off just making a thick tailpad instead?
The best way to do this (or trial it) would be to use a block of foam, just shape it as desired and glue to board between deck and trac-pad. This is one instance where xps would be useful.
I'd be concerned that a thicker, squared off tailblock will catch/hang up when you land backwards. But I could be wrong....
From the shaper himself!
Trying it with the traction pad would definately be the cheaper option as well, but I will definately try this on one of my older junk boards as I would hate to glue a pile of dookie on my new coil. It could potentially hang up when landing an air reverse, but I also see it helping you ollie off the lip. Tail rocker does this to some extent as do most modern tailpads, but I think their is the potential to enhance this in todays modern freestyle way of surfing.
Airs are becoming more and more common in even some of the older pro’s repertoire, and represent the future of surfing.
I am open to other ideas as well of making a surfboard more “Air friendly”.
A guy I know had an idea for a kicktail, but it would be like a lifted foot placement area out of stiff fiber, and the water could flow under/around it.
I’m thinking that thinning it out before the kick may not be the right kind of flex. May end up snapping at the thin spot.
I always wondered why we don’t shape a back foot placement thing into the board. I was going to do it one one of my boards, but I never got around to it. Maybe the next short board I do I’ll shape it in.
I just bought a traction pad today because I wasn’t happy with my surfing this weekend. I know my back foot was way far up on a couple waves and I would have made better top turns if I was right over the sweet spot. I never liked the pads, but I think I’ll give in and try it.
Thats actually a good point. We shape boards today and plan to slap a traction pad on them because the current tail shapes dont really support most modern high performance surfing manuevers. I guess the issue though is if you shape the tail of the board like a traction pad, what effect will this have on the flex of the board?
Similarly why do the decks of our boards require an additional agent for traction (wax) as opposed to having traction built into the design? But I guess that would be another thread.
thought you might like to have a look at this Oak Foils board here: http://oakfoils.blogspot.com/2011/05/custom-cosmic-glyder-for-kawika.html
as the first photo shows, there’s quite a kick built into the tail, I have admired this board in its first incarnation, this is the 2nd one made that I am aware of by Oak Foils
looks like a skateboard to me…more or less.
I agree that building in the kick will affect flex. I’m old and not too concerned about a lot of flex, so the added stiffness may not be a problem for me. I think it will for a lot of people.
Check out the boards of Ben Wei. He made some crazy stuff and his boards are only designed for airs spins etc. I only have this link left, but somewhere else he glued the kicktail of a real skateboard on his board.
http://www.eastcoastsurfer.com/reviews/5050waveskatesurfboard/index.html