I got ya stiff board right here!
Hey Resinhead, I’m thinking there’s a picture there but I can’t see it…
I think I should have put the question this way- how many of you can’t tell how much flex your board has? The only time I feel flex is in the shore pound when I jump over a wave and put my board down. Then I feel the “boing.” Or when you pop over the back of a big wave and land flat. “Boing.” But when I’m up and riding I don’t feel any boing.
I’m also puzzled about the importance of flex because two of my all time favorite boards- a Zen Del Rio (underground Palos Verdes guy) and a Charlie Smith (underground Haliewa guy)- were bought used and surfed until, not yellow, but brown. Deep brown. Coppertone brown. Even then I didn’t discard them because they lost flex. One delammed and my repair added too much weight and the other was unceremoniously run over by…(irony)…an older lady on an old school triple stringer single fin.
I’m a flex retard. I can’t feel it and I think to be able to manipulate it when constructing boards would take dozens of reiterations of an indentical shape with detailed rider feedback. And even then, has anyone quantified the flex, in a way that others could use?
Bill…smart man, by that I mean suggesting for different camps to agree to disagree…this is like discussing politics and religion.
In one camp you have engineered flex freaks like Greenough who has always been a horsepower freak. Then you have others that are absolutely into stiffness for immediate response as you detail. Then you have guys like Larry Bertleman who LOVED his floppy sloppy single fin in his Aipa Stinger Fins Unltd.box. I remember a surf movie where he showed how it was floppy loose and he said he would go out at Kaiser’s and when cutting back he would get about half thru the arch when SLAM! the fin would hit the box wall and stick and give him an extra jolt through the rest of the turn.
Too funny.
Then you had Kundith, and Peter and Bob Duncan at Wilderness and the flex fins had to bend at the tip just right using your little pinky…if they didn’t flecx over a certain amount the weren’t right. All this attention going in the fin for Richie West to go out and rip big Rincon on a 5’10" Wilderness hull with dead flat tail rocker…and I was impressed even though I was on a full downrailed early day natrual rocker Hynson.
Different camps to be sure.
Now I’m doing my own stringer glue ups and engineering new stuff inside the blanks because if a monkey sees it, he will do it…unlike someone like you, with a mind of your own.
Not taking any sides on this, just something to play around with:
Hey, nifty little video. I’m sure a lot of folks will weigh in on this…there’s probably a sliding scale on this sort of thing. No doubt everyone has there personal preferences. I’ll say this…there’s a whole world of flex out there yet to be quantified…including torsional flext, specifically postioned aka engineered flex, variable flex (Tinkler tail) etc. etc.
from the guy who made his millions selling “flex” in surfing worldwide
his latest incarnation…
Hi Bernie - Great footage. Kinda puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?
for those of you who like flexy boards then my suggestion would be to not bother with the McCoy tuflite. I borrowed my mates nugget on the weekend. 6’ 1" and 3" thick! I don’t think it was flexing much under my 56kg of weight. A bit quirky but worked really well!
I’m totally with you on this one. For me, flex through the middle of the board is not necessarily a good thing. Flex in the tail on a shortboard is good. Flex in the nose on a nose rider is good, but for a different reason. Aside from adding extra hardware, either extra stringers, rods, flextails… a well foiled shortboard will have little flex where I don’t need it, and more flex where I do. A little flex through the middle… the kind that a thinner board with a flat deck will give you… is a good thing in those dumpy beachbreak waves where you get up, hit the turn bid face, and pull in. But other than that, I think too much flex scrubs off too much speed and kills responsiveness. Longboards - stiff. Big wave boards - stiff. Performance shortboards - a little flex in the tail and nose through foil, kind of like how a longbow flexes when you draw it.
But it comes down to rider preference. You certainly don’t want to build a stiff board for somebody who’s used to riding a PU/PE board that’s 2 1/8 thick. You can preach all you want about how stiffer is better, faster, more responsive, blah blah blah… But if that guy hops up on his first wave and that board dosen’t feel like he wants it to feel, he’s calling that board a dog.
I also don’t believe a board’s flex will let you “load up energy.” I have a problem with that whole concept, even with flex fins. But that’s another topic.
Um, if you don’t believe flex will let you load up energy, you evidently never saw George Greenough make impossible sections at Rincon or huge 15 ft. Razorblades (Ranch) that no one else even got close to making.
The engineered flex pattern of his spoon would have progressive layers of cloth throughout it to facilitate a graduated flex. And the fin was yet another flex feature. “Innermost Limits of Pure Fun” and “Echoes” boh serve as testament to the performance he derived from his extensive experimentation with flex and the horsepower he derived from it. At least in one sequence from his self designed camera pack (which weighed around 50 lbs.) he offered the first in the tube cinematography climaxing with breaking out of the lip while deep in the tube, then running along outside the lip to pull back up into the pocket…on about a fifteen foot barrel. How many pro’s do that today?
I would put his surfing up against ANY SURFER TODAY (including KS) using his flex spoon’s of 40 years ago. You can ride as stiff as you like, and GG would still make impossible sections for everyone else.
You would have had to have been there to know this.
P.S. Flex, stiff, timbre, (vibration) damping…all have their place for their individual needs and desired effect(s).
PPS… the 60’s will never happen again.
Hola Allan, just had a peek at those flex tails and the nextflex vid you posted. That’s interesting the way you leave the tails thin like that… There must be drastic change in the feel of the shape; I wonder how much is from extra flex and how much alteration occurs from losing floatation in the tail 8" of the board… Looks interesting. Do you shape those boards with any extra volume towards the back (of the fully fleshed out part) to make up for that?
something Swhuz(Jarrod) clued me several years ago when he built and rode his Makore veneer skinned fish years ago (remember that post?)…
but it involves the concept of “timbre” and the “sound” your board makes when you tap on it in and out of the water.
I think that ths sound or vibration tells you alot about the flex response or type of flex response you’ll get from a construct of any type.
it’s my belief that good riding boards produce high “timbre” when tapped no matter what they are made of.
I also use this test on cores I use because the higher and louder the “timbre” when you tap or drum your fingers on a core the livelier it should be once shaped and glassed in my opinion at least. Timbre drives what kind of shell I need to build around the core and the needed thickness of the core.
Maybe just another way to look at the whole “flex” concept to quantify it a bit. I know it does for me cause flex doesn’t mean anything to me without “spring” and I belive in most cases spring produces a tone.
Maybe “T-flex” isn’t for “Timber Flex” but for “Timbre Flex”
now if we can just figure out the appropriate key we should play our scales in…
Hey DS - I’m with you to a large degree, but how much of Greenough’s action would you account to knee riding in general?
I lived in Summerland for a while in the early 90’s, and was blessed to be there through an el-nino year. On a clean overhead day at Rincon, the only peple I saw ever make the creak mouth section were a couple of old time knee boarders… From my observations, it was the fact he was riding with the board flat to the face, straight down the line in the near vertical pocket of the face… then at the last possible moment he would release his line, fly down the face just in front of the section, hit his edge just as it exploded and fly around into the next sections pocket…
(These same guys, they looked like ZZ Top on knee boards, “showed” me how to ride Hammond’s, by their big cut backs all the way back into the white water which, as you probably know… then down the line.) I’d be tempted to argue it was there style and not there boards… granted, to the best of my knowledge, they were not riding spoons.
Do you know if anyone ever successfully rode a stand up spoon?
What about the notion that the spoon worked well for Greenough, for his approach to a certain type of wave, and that it may not have been the ideal vehicle for a wider variety of waves?
Ahhh… yes… George Greenough and his flex spoons. Truely remarkable. Unfortunately, I never say him surf in person. I am a big fan of him and his films, and everything he’s done for our sport. Really an amazing man and character, and an absolute revolutionary thinker and wave rider. But I’m not entirely convinced that flex was what made him make those sections. Maybe it was hull shape (my instinct tells me that was the main factor), dampening, superior wave riding ability… or a combination of a bunch of things. But I don’t think you can say flex is why he went so fast. Innermost limits is one of my favorite surf films of all time.
The problem I have with this idea of flex loading up energy and releasing it, is this… just considering the phyisics involved, in order for a board to give some kind of thrust during the flex return phase of the flex, the board actually has to move faster than the rate of the flex return. The board will bend as force is applied. This is where people say it loads up with energy. In order for the board to “boing” back and give a push of thrust, the force used to bend the board to begin with would have to be released faster than the board could spring back - you’d have to literally jump off your board! Same thing with a fin… you’d have to come out of your turn faster than the fin can spring back!
I believe the sensation of “thrust” you feel from flex is actually an acceleration as you return to speed that the flex robbed you of during the turn.
This is something I know most people will not agree with me on, but I’m willing to challenge my own way of thinking about the topic if there’s a better arguement out there.
So let’s hear it!
Too many variables…
but im enjoying the discussion, learning too
Hey Bernie, when I made my paulownia bonzer, at the point when the skins were one but not the rails, that board was like a frikin marimba. I was blown away by the sound. I glassed that board with 2.74 oz (nightmare cloth- fine weave, wouldn’t lap) and 3.2 on the deck. The board was a dog, but not because of flex issues, rather volume issues.
Some are saying that flex is best in the tail of shortboards…yep, right where we load them up (and stiffen them) with 3 or more fins…
Since there’s discussion about flex in the nose and tail of boards I think some will appreciate theses links relating to tail flex.
Mitchell Rae of Outer Islands surfboards take on flex and flex tails he has been making for over 3 decades.
All my fellow Aussie’s will be familiar with Mitchell’s work but if you’re from around the globe and not an Indonesian pilgrim you probably haven’t seen them.
http://www.outerislandsurfboards.com/articles/flextail.html
Also another part of his website re flex
http://www.outerislandsurfboards.com/articles/Flexi%20Time.html
And his new approach to stringers in a v configuration for controlled flex.
http://www.outerislandsurfboards.com/outerisland.html
Then Jed Done of Bushrat surfboard’s on NSW’s South coast take on flex tails
http://www.bushrat.com/page/flextails.html
Also Michael Mackie is doing flex tails.
Oneula NJ and Taylor and anyone else…
Timbre: vibration pointor hw a material vibrates resonates, etc…big wave guns were scrutinized years ago primarily with the comparison of balsa to polyurethane foam. It was believed the balsa had the ability to negotiate chop and other forces inherent to huge Hawaiian waves better than the foam of the day. It was common to see ‘Rhinochasers’ with lots of wood stringers in them to improve not only strength against breaking but the hulls ability to move through the water with a “solid” feel.
We are on quite a different trek right now with Comp Sands and other materials and methods of construction. I feel this is a godsend with a lot of the credit going to people that belong to Sway’s and are actively experimenting in what is otherwise (IMO) a stagnant period of surfboard production…esp. when it comes to pro surfers and the contest circuit in general. Yes, I feel that part of surfing is totally stagnant.
Physics: surfboards are prone to and susceptible to many forces of physics that both challenge them and allow them to work. Focus on inertia, centrifugal force, gravity, and deflection in this present instance.
Yes Greenough is lauded for not only being one hell of a surfer (whether on his knees or not) but also a common sense genius. By this I mean he took every day things and redesigned them into high tech leading edge reincarnates to fit his needs. A good example of this was his camera. He literally rebuilt the camera from the ground up after extensively researching what he would need to allow his camera to shoot at twice the speed in frames. His gal was not to show how it looked, but “how it feels”…this resulted in changing the ball bearings in the camera and other tewaks that allowed for ultra high speed filming thereby creating ultra slow motion capabilities that, up until that point didn’t exist.
Mark, the bearded ZZ Top looking guy at Rincon was one of a few that stood out and still surf there to this day. Paul Nussbaum was another standout that rode a modified spoon kneeboard that I built any number of them for him while at Surf n Wear in the early 70’s. The dished out decks were less than George’s but had many similarities in that and other respects.
However GG’s spoons were extreme to fit his particular style of attack. He was particularly adept at finding what he called powper spots or pockets in the waves that no one else seemed able to pick up on. He told me he actually liked going out at Rincon when it was bouncy and ugly and crossed up because it was more interesting to find those doubled up power pockets that his board responded particularly well on. Some of what you contend is very true: he had a very low center of gravity in that spooned out displacement hull. The boards all had “neutral bouyancy”…if they lay in the water they didn’t bob, nor did they sink…this was a key feature. George used big Jet fins to power the board out to the lineup.
Another challenge in his designs were the rail foam along the perimeter of the fiberglass. The problem of compression was very real which led him ultimately to balsawood after trying EPS and other core materials. I layed up a board off George’s for Ron Radon in the 70’s when George was working on a new fin to retrofit his board with. This was a ridiculously time consuming way to build a spoon, but Ron wanted it directly off George’s and was willing to pay me to do so. The opportunity was there to see exactly how the glass layers were postioned to make such a unique watercraft.
Your description of how he rode isn’t exactly correct. But not terribly far off either. He frequently rode in big sweeping figure 8’s powering deep back into the turmoil of tumbling whitewater then somehow came flying out (or sometimes the surge pushed him out…not able to disldge him from board because he was cradled in it so deeply) with mach speed.
But there were also days of glassy smooth conditions with an appropriate groundswell that afforded enough power for his spoon that revealed the capability of hard, square on edge rail turns at insane speed…however if you ever looked at the “edge” he was supposed to be cranking off…the edge didn’t exist! That’s because the boards were full displacement hulls with bely and flats and the only edge control achieved was from them being blade thin fiberglass layers in the back. Did you ever see any pics of him doing a bottom turn and you can noticeably see his knees thru the bottom?
Suffice to say George was an anomally in surfing…not unlike Wayne Lynch and Kelly Slater…they come along in sports…Michael Jordon, Secretariat, Gretzky…there’s more. George was a lovable freak…part fish…maybe more so than human as most of us know it. He could lineup any spot he ever swam out to within the first 5 minutes. He didn;t like Hawaii prefering CA and OZ. and stops along the way to and from those destinations.
I would hate to think that all the time and energy he spent on his flex theories were all for naught. You physics theory of how energy is absorbed then released is a great simplification from all the dynamics that are at work while in a real life situation. I would have to appeal to you to considier how anything with weight mass and volume can react differently in a centrifuge depending upon the composition that makes the item moving throughdo what it does…otherwise we may as well assume a ping pong ball will move exactly the same as a steel ball bearing…not so. Actually that makes me perk up with Oneula’s use of the word “spring” versus flex. I have a difficult time accepting flex as only an energy absorbing feature that takes away from immediate response as Bill originallty stated. I don’t think anyone brought up the ability for boards to fit into the wave curvature, absorb or torsion to provide more energy by virtue of flexing versus the LOSS of energy through remaining rigid in a swirling curved mass of energy. We could start inviting new terms like pitch and yawl into this discussion if so inclined…does a stiff 4x4 move through water faster than someting that slithers?
The beauty (and attraction) for me in designing and uilding the modern day surfboard, is the myriad combinations of things we can do to and with them. Part is in the composition, and part is in the choreography of orchestrating compound curves to achieve a desired effect. Like artists, some are better than others at arriving upon a desired effect.
It may be that flying the modern day jet is closer to designing surfboards than we realize, they say part of piloting is art, and part of it is science. I’d like to think we are exploring the best in both…
Rereading your statements about the loading part of the turn or in physics terms the absorbing of energy…ultimately the releasing of energy is a combined force: that of the vehicle in conjunction/combinaton of the wave. Both have enrgy unto themselves. The fact that there is absorption of energy at any particular point does usurp the ability for energy to be combined and increased or multipled at any other given point.
There is most likely a mathematical eqaution that could be offered, but I personally don’t know it. It might help you to envision what happens with a glance off the top of a wave. This is a good example of two bodies of energy combining to provide a given result.
Glance, rebound, slingshot, richochet are all exaples of diferent scenarios invlovling energy. In our case glance and rebound…or as Oneula suggested, spring…are good ways to think of it.
It isn’t correct to think of the rider having to fall off the board in the acceleration scenario you present…it oly means they would need to anticpate and absorb part of the energy and subsequent velocity.
DS - I sit in awe… Thanks for taking the time… I’ll just think about it all for a while…
Like I’ve joked before… If I had the time and resources… who knows what I’d be doing… I’m still just hot wiring eps, 6oz glassing, and trying to maximize curves to best do what I want to do. And, a big given in my reality is a board that works in lots of conditions, and will last/hold up for a long time (If it’s, as the last few creations have been, one that works well.) is something that appeals to me.