Its great to have your theorys backed up by other shaper/designers. I tried Hard rails all the way up on my boards about 15-18 years ago. i did a few for friends too. they all loved them Too. the only negative comments were before the board was ridden. Once they surfed the board it was all good...
But as always the marketplace dictates we do designs just like everyone else... Your welcome to discuss having hard rails on your next custom!
This is a reprint of A Surfline article by Maurice cole. Eminence grise of the designing set:
This innocent seeming question is hitting modern high performance design right on the nail. The logic of hard rails-versus-soft deserves to be challenged. Mark Richards once said, "Hard rails don't catch, bad rocker lines do." This would have been 20 years ago. I think we're only beginning to get a grip on what he said today.
Why do boards have softer front edges? It's simple. In traditional surfing style, the front half of the board is essentially irrelevant to the turn. Most of the time, you're lifting the nose out, and only using the last two feet of tail rail -- the hard bit -- to turn.
Rails have been left soft up front because many designers have believed that hard edges up front would "catch" -- ie., interfere and block water in turns. I think this is a fallacy on the modern high-performance surfboard. The softer front edge is designed to be forgiving. In fact, it's too forgiving. The softer the edge, the more the water wraps around and sucks onto it, the less control you have. It's like sloppy suspension on a car.
Here's an example: you've probably seen the footage and photos of the Jaws sessions late last year. What we (Ross Clarke-Jones rides MCs) found was amazing. Ross was riding 6'6"s and they actually felt too long! In 30-foot waves! Those boards had hard rails from nose to tail and yet they didn't catch -- in fact, they were incredibly lively. They felt too long because suddenly Ross was able to use the whole rail to turn off, not just the last two or three feet. We've cut lengths down to 5'10" and 6'3" and we'll probably cut more after the next swell.
Tow-ins have taught me over and over again that we don't know what we thought we knew. I believe we've gotta be able to translate that back to everyday surfboards. I went in on my high performance boards recently and started putting hard rails in way up, from nose to tail. All I found were improvements. The boards paddled better; they took hold of water and got it under the board quicker; reaction times improved. You could use all the board, all the time.
Surfboard rockers have improved tremendously since MR called it on 'em way back when. Maybe it's time we kissed the soft front rail goodbye.
