I used to dream of a surfboard with no fins, as we know them, but with the same hold that fins give.
I would day dream about a finless surfboard with purhaps deep channels on the bottom rear, and even scupper holes for water to completely pass through the boards from bottom to deck at the rear…like a very deep concave at the middle which channels the water through a hole in the surfboard and out the back…when moving at enough speed to do so…so it would give some hold to the board or some system like that.
The point is, even if its 16 miniture fins which can be repositioned in combinations to tune the board, or a fins on a swivel, or some wild futuristic contraption…I would love to see the fin re invented …or viable alternatives to traditional fins.
We all know that good performance surfers like to release the fins when they hit the lip and such…like power slides so why not accomadate that.
One day I was thinking I’d like to carry a board down to the beach without those fragile and dangerous fins sticking out on it and some other method of hold.
The fins will probably be around for ever. It’s already a perfect way to give the surfboard hold through turns. But alot of the hold through a turn is from setting the rail…
I’m thinking out loud now. but the fins has been split from single into twin into three in to four fins on surfboards. Why not have 100 fins so tiny they don’t look like fins and it’s just more of a texture on the bottom of the board…like spikes on a porcupine, or ridges on a pineapple or something… dam it …
i agree with Barry. It can seem like nothing is new but there’s always a trickle of new techniques, materials or surfing products on the net.
The new surfboard building techniques are for the more advanced guys who probably don’t share their magic skills on the net but it’s not that hard to invent a new product.
Take a moment to relax and just think random thoughts like…
Why are surfmats square ?
Where did the Twinzer go ?
Can I fly like Laird ?
How come one finbox won’t take every fin ?
From those questions challenge yourself to find an answer.
Go make it happen. With fins I’d agree that there’s not a lot new but we limit ourselves to only accepting fins that look a certain way.
There’s always room to draw outside that fin template and see what happens, I can think of 5 ideas now that might be fun to try without changing the standard fin template… 1/ how about working out where the greatest pressure is on a fin during a turn and maximising the inside foil for that instant ? 2/ see if there’s a benefit to putting a thin leading edge detached foil near to the side fins to lower the stall angle ? 3/ maybe remove half the volume in the fin base so the long base foil isn’t as much of a drag ? 4/ could you change a fins sweep angle by using a pivoting base? 5/ maybe have a glass on base with changeable ‘click on’ fin heads ?
5 minutes, 5 ideas. Once you start building it you got something new to think about, to build and share.
Surfboards are a bit like aircraft. All the basic design ideas have pretty much already been explored. Only a few years after the Wright brothers first flew, aircraft had basic features common to all modern aircraft. The DC3 which first flew in the 1930’s is in principle not a lot different from a 787. You could make the same case for construction: the Egyptians had it pretty munched sused five thousand years ago. String Lines, water levels and measuring corner to corner to make things square.
By all means have a play with finless boards, like many others have in the past. What you will probably discover is that there is a very good reason why surfboards have Fins, and that was discovered before most if us were born!
It seems like surfboard design has been punctuated equilibrium.
Builders have been shaping rails by dead reckoning for decades.
Flex is another nebulous design concept with many** opinions **and little empirical information.
Building materials: EPS or PU sealed with fiberglass are the pinnacle?
While the laws of physics may define the limits, loss of imagination and the belief there is nothing left to learn are the key ingredients for stagnation.
there are infinite possiblities in surfboard design, as there are in most creative endeavors. Eventually, I suspect we will stop thinking in terms of “old” designs, “new” designs, and things like “progressive” or “re-inventing”. Putting all marketing hype aside, which is mainly a sales tool, one begins to see design options as just different paths leading to different outcomes, neither “good” nor “bad” in themselves. A longboard performs different than a shortboard, a belly board is made for a different type of surfing than a surfboard, a finless wood alaia is a whole different beast than most foam / finned surfboards, etc. Since all these types can and do co-exist at the same time, new old or progressive isn’t the key to understanding them, its more a case of what are they designed to accomplish?
Brett’s hydrofoil is surely progressive now, as he is navigating unchartered waters, but in time will, I believe, become another standardized type of surfcraft. So then, it becomes another design option to explore, depending on what you want to accomplish in your surfing.
It seems to me that a lot of surfing’s prejudices are fueld by economic motives, the need to paint a certain type of surfboard or method as superior, more progressive, etc, and make other shapes or methods seem old, dated, inferior, and so forth, in order to boost sales. I don’t consciously subscribe to those prejudices, for the most part, but I’m sure I am still influenced by them to some degree.
I’ve been on a similar quest for a finless board that I felt comfortable paddling into head high waves. I made a few alaias, but there isn’t enough volume to get me into anything big and I never installed leash plugs in them, so I was hesitant to go on a few good ones. The Ryan Lovelace “Rabbit’s Foot”, designed by Dan Malloy, makes the most sense to me out of all the finless boards out there. I just finished my version of it and I’m minutes away from getting it in the water. Just waiting on the wife to get home and watch the kid so I can break the cherry on this bad boy. I really hope I didn’t waste hundreds in materials and a week’s worth of free time on this one!
This makes me think of an interview in a recent SJ with Occy, Curren and Kong. They were talking about the kids and how far they’ve come, airs being a standard trick at any beachbreak these days for example and where the performance aspect would go from there- I believe Occy said the way of the switchfoot, or rather like snowboarders and skaters, switchstance with no defined backside or front side- s(I believe Mctavish talked about that possibility of a double end board which brings me back to the point- in one of his articles in 67 or so) - Would a board with integrated channels, slight fins, or the like be the way? And I mean for an upcoming generation that is used to going whichever way the board points - nose is the tail tail is the nose I’m not sold on the finless board to be the messiah of boards at least for how I like surf right now but that style of surfing could push the envelope of design but I guess it could be kind of like a wake board… Has been in the back of my head- an interesting concept… but may be one of those that looks good on paper…
