Once you are on your feet its all about the surface area of the board, the curve of the outline, the shape of the rails…and what bit of flex there is. Watch a good skim boarder ride his board down the line if you don’t believe me…you could remove all the volume if you’d like once the board is planing.
Mako224
Two questions, What speed is a skim board travelling at and how does this speed compare to a surfboards speed ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdcTIc1YDeI
This video always gets posted, it’s brad domke surfing on a skimboard. Like takeoff in a wave and everything. I think he could go faster with small fins or something to help him control the direction other than sinking the tail.
How did a “magic” shape come into being?
A bunch of different boards were tested, one ONE came thru with flying colors for most of the surfer’s who tried it.
Meaning, YOU might hate it, love it, or be indifferent to it.
Volume is important for paddling. Once you know your ideal volume, it doesn’t matter if you’re paddling a 5’6 or a 6’6. Over the past 2 years, I’ve come down from 6’0"-6’6" to now riding 5’8"-6’0". Keeping my volume around 31L, paddling and catching waves is largely unchanged, but maneouverability when riding is much better.
Those average surfers stuck inside on their 5’6’s and 5’8’s haven’t figured out their ideal volumes yet.
Cheers
Paul
Volume is just another dimension to give you a better idea of the overall characteristics of a board. It doesn’t have much meaning until used in context with the other dimensions to paint an overall picture.
Data is good if you are interested in getting consistent, similar results.
Volume is a good way to think about floatation or buoyancy in a board. But it’s displacement that is the measure of how it supports weight as a flotation device isn’t it? Because there are differences in core material structure and density (ie Poly blank vs. EPS blank). The same volume in one core wouldn’t float the same as the other. So I assume that construction must be factored into the volume number.
Displacement is a figure that follows the Archimedes Principle which states: “the weight of an object is reduced by its volume multiplied by the density of the fluid”
2 boards of exactly the same shape but different core and construction will float differently even though they have the same volume.
And just for fun, something this poor Florida boy just learned by moving to Oregon, colder water is less dense. Therefor the same volume is less buoyant depending on water temp as well.
And salinity.
And barometric pressure at sea level that day.
And what song happens to be playing on the radio causing sympathetic vibration to the surface of the ocean.
Extra pounds from wetsut plus increased viscosity of cold water is probably a bigger deal.
Asking six blind men to discribe an elephant
I heard the story and only remember the end.
Especially the end where their impressions
and conclusions were influenced by handling the
snout , the tail , or the ears.Volume as a focal
concern is a swell alternative but just another
Talking point for remote analyisis.
Standing high on the bluff high over the surf
is a far cry from belly paddling through the shorebreak.
The first thirty two strokes Kneel paddling
requires adequate flotation.
how many liters diffrence give or take
will make the diffrence?
What Volume to weight/payload is required to get the mid rail line
at water surface level? Without this calculation paired with the
provided “volume” information It just is a single point in space.
The third piece of information is What is the desired ‘sink factor’
as a board too ‘corky’ to duck under or sink a rail.
With three units of evaluation in place we can plot
a plane in space and go on to looking at a wrist watch
or barometer or high altitude contrails ,all the while
discussing and not paddling out.
Getting use time is the only way to get crystal clarity
on a given rendition of a given surfboard.
Calculating devices as formulaic tools to evaluate
surfboards are for Dry time.Wet time analysis
is the only reliable method as any drytime
tools are all speculative…
…ambrose…
on my cd player
the desired volume
varies from recording
to recording.
Thelonious Monk
is never
loud enough.
It was written in the stars that volume would become the new standard reference.
It’s like with compsand: windsurfing started 15years earlier with compsand.
And around 15 years ago, windsurfing shifted from length to volume. Now length is a secondary measurement in windsurfing, only few people know the lengths of their boards by heart these days.
Want to know what’s next? In windsurfing there is a revival of multi fin setups. Ow wait maybe that is one of the few things where wavesurfing is ahead 
Excuse me for being cynical, but really as a part time windsurfer I’m always surprised by the “new technologies” not being new at all.
But don’t get me wrong, I’m very impressed by the work of the masters here! In many ways wave surfboard shapers put way more soul in there boards than windsurfboards will ever have.
My water time says the “volume” under my back foot matters - as much, or more, than out line, rail shape, etc…
if you’ve got lighter core, you have to use more glass to get similar strenght, so lightre core doesn’t really mean lighter board and if, what’s the difference ? 200 grams ? so if two boards are the same volume, you stand on them with 80kg plus 3 kg of board weight or 80 kg plus 2.8 kg, you can feel it ? bollocks…
.
how bout volume in quarts.
I hate to be the only one
in the dark about the metrix
but I.'m just a victim of
circumstance…
How’s that board float?
Good but I cant
knee paddle it.
…ambrose…
how many liters does it take
to make a sinker a floater?
Can you uphaul the sail
when you ride that sailboard?
mebe decibels would be
a good measuring tool
to measure the hoots
while riding…
how many quarts
to the decaliter?
I remember when the “Rise of the Machines” first cast a shadow down here where i am. I thought myself really cutting-edge when I loaded up APS 3000 and had Miki cut me a pre-shape. (My one and only ever, as it turned out - and now the flat blank thing I do just would’nt hold down on the suction cup system commonly used.)
There was an amusing little thingo in the software which converted the volume into beers…
Anyway, eventually it seemed that machine shapes went from being something clandestine - it wasn’t a boast - to…almost the market standard. Punters could nail down their ideal board to a litre measurement. It seems to give them some confidence from one board to the next, especially when they can actually have the very same model puffed up a few litres more when they get fat.
Some order enquiries I receive cite a litre figure of a favourite board.
So I have to explain that I don’t use a machine…I don’t even design onscreen. For some there’s a sense of surprise that these boards could be done by hand, let alone actually are. These guys are not my typical customers.
In one case I was requested the file used for a guys board - “so I tweak it when I get into doing my own” (!!!)
Other requests have been - do the board approximately onscreen, then handshape. No - I can’t be arsed. And - Build a tank big enough to submerge a board in and measure the displacement. No, I definately can’t be arsed!
I think there’s a generation that missed the whole handshaped thing, and mostly they don’t give a damn.
I haven’t actually missed out on any orders because I can’t give a volume figure, although, along with the usual dimension variables, I would if I could.
So, legit, but not the biggest consideration.
Yesterday, Heard Jake Patterson give an interesting guideline for volume:
For every kilo of your weight, One beer in volume. Pros ride about ten beers less than their weight.
Is it aku that gives you beer volume?
Seems like a useful rule of thumb:
A beer is 12 fl oz = 0.355 liters = 0.0125 cu ft.
For example, 150 lbs = 68 kg
68 x 0.355 = 24.14 liters
68 x 0.0125 = 0.85 cu ft
For Us non-metric types, an equal rule of thumb would be:
Roughly your weight in pounds divided by 6 = number of liters for board
150 / 6 = 25 liters
For pros roughly (10 beers less volume)
150 / 7 = 21.4 liters
Have I lost out???
Again, it’s all my fault for writing the volumes on our boards back in 2006. But I’m glad the rest of the industry ‘‘discovered’’ it too. I said on here back then that they would figure it out and it would become a standard dimension, just like length and width.
Also advised back then a ratio of .50 cubic feet per 100 lbs of body weight (for shortboards), +/- 10% for personal preference.
Very useful for working across a quiver, fine-tuning custom boards, etc. etc. Most of our customers are so dialed in to it now they give me their own adjustments. Which we can accomodate most of the time. Sometimes guys ask for more volume than can possibly be packed into a set of dims and I have to tell them ‘‘I’m a shaper not a magician’’ lol.
“And around 15 years ago, windsurfing shifted from length to volume. Now
length is a secondary measurement in windsurfing, only few people know
the lengths of their boards by heart these days”
personally find that really interesting, and fully supportive of the other salient points made that Volume Is Real. And after reviewing several big box web sites where volume is predominant, the intersection of function and marketing hype makes sense.
With the current focus on maximally efficient boards of relatively minimum proportions, now closing in on windsurf dimensions, every Liter of distributed foam is going to have an impact on float and foil = rocker and performance. So Volume Matters.
And concurrently, the mass surfboard market has successfully sold the masses on the concept of the Surfboard Model vs. the truly custom surfboard, clearly outlining the importance of volume differentials, and all those in-house shaping machines are just waiting to be fed the cutting algorithms.
Because time is money, true customs take too much time, and if you can hook the public on models, and convince them on the concept of ‘custom volume just for you’, the big box boys have just successfully changed, to their increasing profits, what is considered a custom board.
So if you want to order your ‘surf just like Dane’ model, only he’s a bigger stud riding 4 six-paks of volume and you’re lighter in the ass by 40#, you order it with just 3 six-paks of volume.
Order comes in, about 30 seconds on the keyboard inputting the volume parameters for your new $700 ‘custom’, and the blades start a whirling on your new ‘custom just like Danes only with less volume.’
Yea, volume does matter.