Another attraction of this design (for me, at least): economics.
If I can build a 5’0" that performs like a 6’0" - now that’s a nice reverse economy of scale. As my spare change for board building is fairly tight these days, I like the sound of 15 to 20 percent savings on materials.
HPSB
huntington pier shore break
+ 2 +3 +5
Lets build a really big sand castle
below the high tide line
and dedicate it to Eucalid of Alexandria.
Take some pictures of some boards
next to it and start a trend.or... not.
and say we did.
I agree with Oddonein - Having ridden the design - the feel is very different to a HPSB thruster - you don’t have to continually be pumping for speed. It feels more like surfing the wave rather than surfing the board. This I found quite disconcerting when I first rode mine - but once you get used to it its pretty cool. Also they’re really stable when taking off - wide tail planes earlier and the lack of drag means the board doesn’t get buffeted by the water getting sucked up into the lip. If you’re already ripping on a standard board i.e you have that bottom turn to pocket turn rythym wired then you probably don’t need one of these. I’d recommend this board for guys who are riding quads who want something that carves vertical arcs and rides on the rail better but still maintains trim speed. Also good for people who like to throw their board in the car.
Came across this today http://vimeo.com/51662174 Check out the board at 1:02 in the vid. I guss Dave’s been using Phi too.
that vid is pretty rad. MAD SCIENTIST SHIT… i understand everyone has their own opinion on boards and dif shapes. thanks for all the replies and bla blah blah bickering haha. i think the vangaurd is a cool board and def different. my friend just had a duplicate shaped by wheatly here at becker in southbay and he loves it. we both kinda like the same style boards.
A mate of mine has one of these. He works in a surf shop so surfs heaps of boards. He always has a new board every three weeks to try out.
He likes it so much he bought one and now says it shows up the deficiencies in every other board he has ridden since. This is the first board ive ever heard him say he wouldn’t change anything on.
The bottom shape sure is complex. I wonder if there is a functionalaspect to it, or marketing point of difference.
I fought it, I fought it, but then I got an order for one. So I wrapped my head around the concepts in my own way - mine is not a theory logic.
This is my opinion on what’s going on -
The section between your feet is the part that planes, the engine room, so to speak. Then the tail, behind your back foot determines what you are able do with the resulting speed - variants on the drag that keep you in control…preventing the tail from trying to get in front of the nose. I.e - curve versus straight outline, rocker flip, pulled-in-ness etc.
So then lop off the board after the back foot - you need to employ other aspects of design to keep the speed under control, and you have less space to do it in. Hence the double tipped swallows, rearward and parallel fins, channels…
The straight rail line is already fast - more rail in contact with the wave face means more draw up the face and a corresponding fall-line from further up and steeper.
That straight rail line and area in the nose and tail seem to make it very stable - there’s not the wobbly feeling you sometimes get with direction changes in a curvy outline - I can recover well in turns where I’ve pushed it out of control. It handles a blind falling floater into the trough for example, or a foam rebound.
The pics are my current personal board - I’m 6’4 and 95 kg, 42yo and slowing down heaps with old injuries - this thing has excited me more than a string of recent wide curvy numbers.
I’ll definately make more of them.
JD
dart_one_s by JD_Shape, on Flickr
dart_three_s by JD_Shape, on Flickr
flextail_one_s by JD_Shape, on Flickr
I have a couple of boards which follow his theory, one by Josh Dowling (5'8" El Mysterioso somewhere else on this forum) and have surfed a 5'6" Vanguard quite a few times.
It definitely is another variant somewhere between the HPSB and the glide produced by Lis Fish/Simmons designs. The capabilities are very high performance with the response and control similar to what you might expect with a HPSB made for small to medium size beach waves.
Sure, its also a low volume Lis Fish reworked a little, or a Simmons given more curve and smaller proportions, who cares what you call it, its the package and where it sits in the surfboard spectrum which impresses me.
The main difference I find, as others have mentioned, is the effortless speed typical of Lis Fish/Simmons designs. There truly is just far less drag when you pressure a rail or turn, meaning you maintain a great deal of speed through a turn. This combined with the response creates much more singular force going into turns, or while approaching and attacking lips/higher sections of the wave. This results in more wafting, sliding, projection at times, other times it just means your turns feel more powerful and you keep surfing with a high level of speed into and out of the turns. This is even as a thruster in a Vanguard mind you.
And commenting about his crazy Phi surfboard, I think you guys need to loosen up a little. Being creative is all about being playful and sometimes about using a particular concept to change directions and break the pattern in a large way, and Dan using Phi with that whacky surfboard is just that. I really don't think he believes its a "superior" surfboard for the fact he uses Phi and not another proprotion.
I do think Dan markets his surfboards as very scientific (whether or not all the science makes a huge difference) which is fair enough, marketing is all about differentiation to other products and creating desire to have it above others. If you can differentiate yourself away from other products you are not competing in the same playing field as other shapers, you are creat a level of either/or thinking (e.g. either get a "scientific" Tomo, or get a more traditional foiled out "Fish"). If you want to make any money out of surfboards you do need to market yourself well, and I don't put him down for that at all. He does bore me with his use of physics formulas when he talks though. He never makes any sense when he talks about his boards.
What I DO think is risky for Tomo, is that he also markets heavily to the high performance/elite level crew which are a tough nut to crack. They're notoriously conservative when it comes to surfboards, and I think hes going to be banging his head against that wall for a long time before theres a big change.
saw him riding one of the mentioned boards out at lennox 6ft and have never seen such impressive surfing. Mick Fanning was also out on a standard hp and tomo was the much better surfer on the day. His board seemed alot quicker !
haters gunna hate.
i’m into what he’s done, and the copies i have made for myself are the best boards i’ve ever ridden. more speed, more surgical turns, looser off the top than standard HPSB’s imo. several others I have made them for also agree.
FTR the first one i did had 3/16 toe in on the fins and was a little loose, subsequent ones i have gone to 1/8 to in and about 6d cant
Is he though Cavie? Looking at Firewire’s in the water I’d have to say their market tilts towards the older crew not so much your young HPSB crew. The Tomo is probably the most accessible high performance shortboard around. I had a lot of trouble surfing thrusters as i got older so I switched to quads and modfish shapes. Now I’m back on a trifin and I think I’m surfing better than I did on the fish shapes. Pretty much everything seems easier. The older guys looking to keep their surfing in the pocket are going to migrate to these in great numbers I think. Whether or not kids trade in their Mayhems or DHD’s isn’t that big of a deal when you’ve got a big chunk of the old fart market.
that looks awesome, JD, yours is a lot more foiled out than what i do mine in the tail. love your “factory” as well.
Here’s my most recent, i’m 5’10 x 90kgs and this one is a 5’3 x 19 x 2 7/16:
Hey Pirate - ta for the nod. I can’t seem to get my head around losing a full foot of length yet. I’ll go a bit shorter next I guess, but my idea with the flex tail was that I’d keep volume beefy up til the back foot, then drop it out behind me, so I maintained the length I’m familiar with.
It’s incidental that Tomo’s Dad Mark was an exponent of flextails in the 90’s - respect to both. I can feel that tail changing and flicking in turns, and it whips around far shorter than a 6’11 should!
The board does need to be surfed well back on the tail - The straight middle section means it resists being cranked around from the centre of the board. That could be the flattish rocker too though. I’m going to try tweaking it with weights and heat.
JD
Hey Pirate - ta for the nod. I can’t seem to get my head around losing a full foot of length yet. I’ll go a bit shorter next I guess, but my idea with the flex tail was that I’d keep volume beefy up til the back foot, then drop it out behind me, so I maintained the length I’m familiar with.
It’s incidental that Tomo’s Dad Mark was an exponent of flextails in the 90’s - respect to both. I can feel that tail changing and flicking in turns, and it whips around far shorter than a 6’11 should!
The board does need to be surfed well back on the tail - The straight middle section means it resists being cranked around from the centre of the board. That could be the flattish rocker too though. I’m going to try tweaking it with weights and heat.
JD
Pirate, I noticed you don’t go ultra narrow with yours. From my understanding going narrow is a pretty important detail to keep better heel and toe pressure over the slightly fatter rails, and for faster response in a wider tail. What were your reasons for keeping a little wider? Big feet? 
basically to keep my fat guts on the board and float my 90 kegs. Instead of going longer for the volume i wanted, i widened it up a tiny bit. Tomo goes a little bit narrower than what you would ride a normal hpsb on his, I have been making them approximately the same width as what a HPSB would be, and trying to keep the length at around chin height. I do accomodate the wider width by having i tiny bit more curve in the template than tomo, but its still very straight.
add to that, as a stocky built guy, I don’t generally have trouble leveraging a bit of weight through a bit more width to be affected by the fatter rails, as much as I would bogging thinner rails, or getting tangled up on a board thats too long for me. Thats the problem if your of vertically challenged, weight sufficient build, most mainstream boards are designed for whippets and lanky guys, not too many for the bulldogs out there.
Makes total sense to me! I'm similar proportions to you as well, my shortboards tend to work better when they look like me - short, wide and thick, haha :)
hey pirate did you try to add in those mini nose and tail channels? i can’t really tell by the pics. boards looks fkin sweet though and i wanna shape one about the same size. im 6’2 and 175lbs mabye a 5’5 wwith the same widnth.i surf pretty small boards already so i dont think it would be much of a jump in length for me. i ride a 5’10x20x2 1/2 board based off the dumpsterdiver and also ride a 5’8 thats a little thinner and less wide that is more like a rnf.
also what usblank would you recommend?
i have done the nose channels in the past, but not bothering now, except for narrowing and continueing the single concave right to the nose. it does have the single channel and mini concaves through the tail.
