I recently rode a board that, for whatever reason, always wanted to pitch nose up. When paddling, riding, whatever, it always wanted to bounce out of the water. I initially misinterpretted the feeling as being looser than mine, but after a few waves I decided it’s not actually looser. When you try to drive it straight down the line it just wants to aim up and twitch out. It sort of doesn’t want to generate speed when pumping. It just wants to aim up and drag the tail. But it also doesn’t drive if you surf it from the tail. Even sitting on it, it seemed very floaty up front and wanted to aim up. I was not a fan.
The board in question is a groveler, so we’re talking chest high and below stuff here. It’s a typical groveler shape, 5’5", probably like 20" wide or so. I don’t have the board to check it out more closely at the moment. I believe it’s just a straight double to flat, or maybe to vee. It didn’t seem to have a ton of tail rocker or anything, so it wasn’t just rocking back onto that. My groveler is also super loose, but it (after 3 iterations lol) pumps for speed like crazy and doesn’t just want to aim up the entire time I’m trying to drive it down the line.
I’m sure it’s some combination of variables. I’d suspect wacky rocker at first, or the deepest part of the concave in an odd spot. I also wonder if the foam distribution is wacky, since like I said it kinda wants to aim up when sitting on it. But my groveler has basically the thinnest tail possible, meaning the futures boxes were just barely not poking through the deck, and it doesn’t act like this. The nose isn’t blade thin on mine either.
Has anybody ever shaped one and had it behave this way, then diagnosed the problem by shaping a second version? None of my boards have ever turned out like this so I haven’t made this mistake yet, but I’d like to know how to avoid it.
I think I understand the question so I’ll make an attempt. While I haven’t experienced the riding issue mentioned I have made a board that generated too much lift under the chest when paddling into waves. The board would get hung up and not let you in. The issue in my case was that the rails from the wide point to the nose were not tucked under enough combined with the concave. This trapped water under the front area of the board instead if letting it flow under.
Rocker apex back from center ? I road one that stick when drop sometimes and want to lift up when ride, only thing that look strange was apex rocker far back, not a pro shape, with flat bottom
Pitch: Every board goes through the water at a certain angle. This angle may be with the nose of the board riding high or the nose riding low. In boat and airplane design this angle is called pitch. Pitch angle is perhaps the single most important aspect when considering a surfboards riding characteristics. This is one reason shapers spend so much time and effort on the design curves related to rocker. Understanding Pitch: The difference in pitch angle can be effected by numerous variables. These include board design, fin design and placement, surfer ability and style, foot placement and weight distribution, and local surf conditions. With all these variables you might question just what affect a modern surfboard shaper has on the overall ride performance of a given design. Actually quite a bit but knowing who is going to be the end user and what conditions the board will be ridden in are important variables that of course cannot always be known. This can lead us into a quandary as to how to optimize performance by adjusting pitch angle in an existing board. Wave conditions: Wave conditions drastically effect the pitch balance of a board. A steep wave will force the board to ride very “nose low” while a mushy wave will make the board ride “nose high.” Interestingly when pilots came back from World War 2 many of them took up surfing because it has many of the same feelings as flying. When an airplane is in a nose high position it is said to be mushing. These pilots would go surfing in slow waves and their boards would mush in the in these conditions. Soon slow waves became known as mushy surf. Board design: Most board design characteristics effect pitch balance. Outline, thickness flow, rail shape and of course rocker. A board with a wide tail and a narrow nose will of course have a significant amount of tail lift thus making a board that tends to ride nose low. Conversely, a wider nose with a narrower tail will tend to ride nose high. A thicker tail, because of flotation of the foam will tend to ride with the tail higher. This generally forces the balance to a “nose low” attitude. More rocker in a board makes for a nose high balance while a flatter rocker make for a nose low attitude. Hard rails create lift. A harder rail in the tail will lift the tail while a softer edge will ride lower in the water. So a harder rail will release water faster but will not allow you to sink as much edge in turns. Now if you combine different aspects of board design together you get different combinations that hopefully balance the pitch angle for you and your favorite surf spot.
Weight distribution and foot placement: How you surf, where you stand on your board and how good you are at creating speed all have to do with what works for you. Do you dent your board more under your front foot, back foot or about the same under each. If you dent under your front foot, then congratulations, your a front foot surfer in the mold of the former world champ Shaun Tomson. Front foot surfers tend to need a bit looser board because the board doesn’t turn as easily from the middle as from the tail and the pitch angle tends to ride a bit “nose low.” This isn’t that much of a disadvantage though because you will connect sections easier and Shaun was a great tube rider. If you dent under your back foot, then congratulations you are a back foot surfer in the mold of the great two-time world champ Tom Carroll. This means that your board can be built a bit stiffer and should have a bit more speed built in because you will have a tendency to have the balance of the board “nose high”. Your surfing style will keep the board loose but it does make it harder to maintain speed. But don’t be disheartened. Tom Carroll is one of the fastest surfers alive and the increased rail to rail looseness of your surfing style allows you to make quick adjustments that can put you into faster places on the wave face. As you can see there is no right or wrong when it comes to weight distribution. There have been great front foot surfers and great back foot surfers and everything in between. So if you dent under both feet you have that in common with Kelly Slater. Need I say more. Ability: This is something you have to earn. Its nice to think that a change in equipment will make you the next Kelly Slater but we all know that doesn’t seem to work. The best surfers are usually able to create speed better and that is usually through their bottom turn. It’s that simple. Well, almost. A board that is balanced nose high is looser rail to rail, the edges don’t catch as easily and is much looser in the pocket. These are real advantages BUT, you have to make the thing go. The average surfer cannot make a board accelerate the way Kelly can so he can’t ride a board that surfs as nose high. Therefore he can’t take advantage of these ride attributes UNLESS he improves his game. Doesn’t seem fair now does it? Fins: Just for simplicity here, lets NOT consider the front fins on your board at all. They have an effect on another balance within your board that is beyond the scope of this article. For this article consider only the back fin on your board which is the primary CHANGEABLE aspect of pitch balance in an existing board. Simply put, the back fin, in effect, pulls the tail down and anchors it to the wave face. The bigger the fin, the more it holds and of course the higher the nose will ride. Also the further it is towards the tail, the more leverage it has to pull the tail down. A smaller fin will hold less but pull down less as well, balancing the board nose lower. By using different fins you can easily change the pitch balance of your board to optimize it for not only your own particular surfing style but for varying surf conditions as well.
Longboards and Pitch: Longboards while quite different from shortboards in the style with which their ridden are nonetheless are affected by pitch as much as any other aquatic vehicle. Back in the longboard days of the 60’s some folks would actually attach bricks to the tails of their boards to achieve more nose time. A crude and barbaric way to effect pitch balance, but still, effective in a very Neanderthal way. A larger fin would have achieved the same result but compare the cost of a new fin with the cost of a brick and I think the mindset of these early surfboard design mavens is clear.
How to tell if you’re out of Balance: Does your board bog? Does it feel stiff on cutbacks? Kind of hanging half way through? Not making sections that you should be? Feel like seaweed is hanging from the fins? Check out a smaller back fin. It may free the board up and allow you to make more sections and be freer on roundhouse maneuvers. Edges seem to be catching? Rail to rail transition slow? Spinning out on cutbacks and off the tops? Sliding on bottom turns? Sliding down into the lip on tube rides? Your back fin is too small. Get something a bit larger. Not having any of these problems? Don’t touch a thing! You have achieved true aquatic balance. Blessed surf design nirvana. The sacred place where all good and decent surfers find deliverance from the dreaded evils of pitch imbalance. Say Hallelujah.
Interesting about the fins. It’s a quad that runs, I think, the same size rears I’d run, but the rear fins more a bit further back and closer to the stringer than mine. Maybe that’s related.
Since you can’t recall how you shaped the bottom and don’t have the board to look at or post pics; pretty hard to come to any conclusions. A straight double to flat or maybe vee doesn’t sound right. Seems to me you may have meant; single to double with V in the tail. Most of the time when a board wants to ride as you describe, it is because the board has too much belly under the front foot. Something is off in your description of your bottom contours.
I did a board that acted like that once. I put a dead flat-to-vee bottom on a longer midlength singlefin and retained the edge way far forward. I used a little belly in the nose but not much. That board was fast when there was some juice but it floated on top and it was hard to engage the rails, which was a bad plan for singlefin and that longer shape. I was trying to make a fast singlefin (which it was) but it wasn’t much fun to surf in smaller conditions and it was twitchy in faster conditions.