Welcome to Part 3 of our in-depth, riveting series on the intricacies of surfboards and their designs. Previously, we rambled on a bit about the history of surfboards, thereafter we commenced waxing lyrical on some basics of board design. Today, in what will likely be the final part of the series, ‘coz we’ve kinda exhausted this topic and our attention span is that of a drugged sea slug, we discuss surfboard noses, rails and tails.
Much like noses and tails found in nature, these surfboard features serve distinct purposes. An elephant’s trunk, a wonderfully modified nose – is about as cool as a nose can get. Similarly, tails in insects, arachnids, reptiles, fish, birds, mammals are all equally as cool, each with their own refined functions. Especially prehensile tails. (Prehensile means the animal uses their tail as another appendage. This is for the less enlightened among us.) A komodo dragon can apparently donner you lekker with their thick tails for example. Indeed, having a prehensile surfboard tail could be ideal. But until technology and shapers’ imaginations catch up, for now we have to settle on a few basic nose and tail shapes.
Let’s start with surfboard noses as this part of the board is fairly straightforward. Longboards tend to have curvy, rounder noses, like plus size models (Ed’s note: Er… are you referring to plus size models’ noses or their body shapes. This is unclear.). As some people are clearly a hair’s breadth from being mentally challenged, it’s imperative to spoon feed our readers occasionally: the noses of most longboards are curvy and round. Make of this what you will. Or better yet, make up your own damn simile, we don’t get paid enough to write any better. (Ed’s note: Form a union then, comrade.)
Moving on. Shortboards’ noses are more varied than longboards’. However, most shortboards typically have a sharp, pointed nose, ideal for sticking in other surfer’s eyes’ and ribs. As well as in annoying editors. Nevertheless, shapers have occasionally been more creative with nose shapes – and surreal shapes like the diamond nose, square nose and rounded nose have occasionally worked well on a shortboard design. Until they no longer work well on a shortboard design. A pointed nose makes the surfboard easy to index while surfing, but apart from this point (Hee hee, see what we did there? Um, also, pointed noses possibly make duck diving easier) there appears to be no real reason for the popularity of dagger shaped surfboard noses.
Then we have the rails, or sides or edges of surfboards. A soft rail has a more rounded shape, while a more square rail is called a hard rail. Cunningly, rails that are in-between are called 50-50. Harder rails turn better and are more suitable for better waves and surfers, while softer rails are more forgiving. And that’s pretty much it for rails. Until some idiot savant shaper tries making inverted concave rails, or serrated edges (Why not, says Trident with a shrug) or some other such lunatic design.
Let’s get onto tail shapes; the most varied part of the board. Tails have shapes like the square, pin, squash, swallow, diamond, and more, and each one in turn has its own smaller variants, like ever-increasingly more extreme sub genres of death metal. A pin tail allows the board to move faster in the water, particularly in solid hollow waves, while the square and squash variants are more all rounders. If the name didn’t give it away, square tails are cunningly shaped like a hard angled square, whereas squash tails look like melted ice lollies. Apparently, nobody knows what the actual purpose of a diamond tail is, but hey – why not. Then there’s the swallowtail. Ah, the swallowtail. Shaped like a swallow’s tail. A swallow is often heralded as the first sign of summer. This tail shape also looks like a W though, so Neptune knows why they decided on calling it a swallowtail. It could also look like a crappily-rendered Batman logo if you had several beers.
And that’s surfboards folks. We may revisit this topic at some point in the future, ‘coz Neptune knows there’s a lot to be said and we’ve barely scratched the surface. Speaking of surface, just make sure you know which surface deck pads and wax go on, and which surface the fins attach to and you;re off to a good start.
