in your experience, what have you found is the most efficient and effective in longboard design when considering…a totally flat bottom,flat in the frint and middle with vee in the tail, totally flat with concave in the nose, flat to vee with concave???confused and trying to figure it all out…lookin for a board that catches waves easily and noserides easily…in 2-6ft east coast point break and beach break.the rest of the boards dimensions i would like to see are 9-6x23.5x18.75x15x3-3.125inches thick… with a 4in nose and tail rocker…thanks for the help…jerry t…
Hey Jerry, Go into the archives here and do a search and you’ll get most of you questions answered. Vee in the tail will allow the board to go from rail to rail easily and will make turning the board a more possitive affair. A flat mid section is a good choice and there are so many schools of thought on nose configuration on longboards I prefer to stay away from that one. A board the size your talking about will catch waves very easily and should have plenty of glide and stability. Mahalo, Rich
Here’s what has worked good for me. A very subtle oval shaped concave in the nose for noseriding, flat middle section, vee in the last third of the bottom. Moderate nose rocker, kind of straight thru the middle with a slight tail kick behind the fin.
I agree, low nose rocker, like 2-3", and flip in the tail (3.5"-3.75" tail rocker for a 9’6 is safe.) Foamdust: do you find that V in the tail helps, hinders, or plays little or no role in noseriding? Like Halcyon says, it noticeably assists with turning, but I haven’t noticed if or how it affects nose riding.
I’ve looked at hundreds of surfboards by some of the well known shapers, and noticed some consistant details when it comes to bottom configuration. Viewed with the deck down, bottom up. 1) If the midsection of the board is flat rail-to-rail, where the flatness begins to bend down to go around the rail, that bend is almost always soft. 2) If there is a little V in the midsection, then the rail has a “tucked under edge”, or at least a much sharper turn. It all has to do with the big word in surfboard design: Resistance. How much of the energy of the wave do you want to catch, and where on the board do you want to catch it. Somebody could write a book on that. Your design sounds good, but with a noserider, my opinion is to go soft on the rails in the middle so the board will be forgiving when you’re out there on the nose with limited ability to steer the thing.
While watching the Jim Phillips/Damascus video again I realized that a good way to get “V” into a board is to make planer cuts, starting from the tail up the blank and increasingly out to the rails. In effect a “V” Now I know that “V” usually means the shape of the bottom when viewed horizontally from the rail but could it also refer to the shaping method? And is this even a fair description or observation of what Jim is doing here? Rob Olliges (eagerly awaiting the Damascus Master’s Glassing DVD)
ghunt, I really cant say if more vee will help or hinder noseriding. I would think rocker, rails and fin size would have more of an effect than the vee. Personally I like to have a board that will hold its line than having the fin(s) let go and the tail sliding out when noseriding. I dont know if youd call me old school, but for me the basic flat to vee bottom is the foundation of a good all around board, long or short.
ya know whats so great???i just posted this thing this morning …a question which i thought was base, mundane, and maybe a bit too beginner-ish to even get a response…all you guys took the time to respond…seriously…i guess they werent stupid questions…youd all make great teachers…thanks for teching me the basic physics of how the bottom configuration affects surfboard design…you guys rule…dr. jerry tartaro…ps. does vee affect the noseriding charachteristics of a board???good question…
My opinion… I cannot imagine that V in the tail, would be enough of a factor that one would notice it while on the nose - unless they can perch all day long and compare boards. That said… I think V should assist in nose riding. it is a break in the line of the bottom rocker (in some respects). when one is on the nose, tail V, since it adds a little bit of surface area to the bottom of the tail, via it’s contour, would work a bit like belly further up in the board, making the tail a bit sticky-er and more stable. more surface area down in the water, more tension between the board and the water = more stability. As opposed to a flat area where the water can only ‘stick’ at the rail. OK, people that know better, shoot me down…
With the exeption of extreme rocker changes I would have to say that its all a matter of personal choice…all of the variations are pretty subtle in the long run.A funny thing about surfboards is that a lot of what makes a good board is in your mind (or how the waves were the first day you rode it).Just an opinion. R.B.
Re: “V” in the tail affecting noseriding. Every design change does something, and probably the most well-known noseriding design requirement is the need for some significant tail rocker. Lance Carsen would shape boards using the nose end of the blank as the tail so he could get that kink in the rocker at the tail. But that’s only part of it. As the water moves toward the back of the board into the “release” area, if the tail is too flat rail-to-rail, or has minimal tail rocker, the water will tend to plane off the edges of the board giving the tail lift. That’s not what you want if you want to noseride. For the nose to stay up, the water at the tail needs to fold around the tail area onto the top of the board.(Look at pictures of guys noseriding) The tail-kick makes the tail suck down, giving the nose lift. Soft rails at the back will also help the water move smoothly around from underneath the board to the top. Joel Tudor is quoted as saying that the David Nuuihwa noserider is the best one around. Check it out.
Yes to Vee, and the wider the tail the more Vee. A hyper kicked tail with 50/50 rails and rounded vee is what Nuuhiwa used to ride, and i held it in my hands and talked with him about it in 1997! Joey Hawkins the best longboarder I’ve ever seen ripping, riding a Wave Tools High-Pro shape used ‘major’ Vee(looked like it almost went up to the deck. He was clearly keeping his speed up and getting vertical and cutting back real well, and hanging five on every wave and promptly beat everyone in 1992. I use more than average Vee and am getting excellent noseriding results with standard clark blanks. Now on a 13.75" tail or narrower it goes to concave double barrel vee for lift. Next time you see a guy ripping ask to check out his stick, there’s reasons for everything, and i think the early nineties longboard elite already established the norms. Vee has the ugly rep of being a slow down, but I am beating sections and getting ten no problem, backpedaling into a mean cutback is a vee plus!!!