I always wonder why the bevels on wing boards are that huge and often run through to the (kick)tail, like on supfoil boards.
To me bevels like on windfoilboards which are usually smaller and fade out to the tail seem more logical.
While touchdowns it's usually the front of the board, that touches flat on the water, so why do wingboards need these huge bevels at the back?
Supplement the kicktail for better pumping? Avoid gripping rails while hard turning (i never saw such hard turns on foils)?
Otherwise they add a lot of instability while standing and slogging.

earlier and more gentle release is my guess:)

Turning without touching down. Creates more clearance.

Select to expand quote

danish said..
earlier and more gentle release is my guess:)

You mean release while pumping or while touching?

Select to expand quote

hilly said..
Turning without touching down. Creates more clearance.

I watched a lot of vids from Pro riders e. g. Kai Lenny etc., and i saw noone touching rails while turning ??

Imo the beveled rails are only relevant for:
1. Kite raceboards, which are ridden with really high angles, to avoid catching rails at high speeds.
2. Wide Supfoil boards, where the width over 30" is needed to gain stability and therefore the rails could catch since the boards are wide.

But for narrower wingboards around 26 - 29" wide i don't get the sense of these beveled rails.
A bevel/rail like e. g. the new Slingshot Wizzard 114, 66cm wide, paired with a tailkick makes much more sense on a wingboard, imo.
The wider bottom with harder edge should enhance the release/glide/planing and therefore earlier lift of the board.
And the tailkick covers the pumping.

Select to expand quote

AlexF said..

hilly said..
Turning without touching down. Creates more clearance.

I watched a lot of vids from Pro riders e. g. Kai Lenny etc., and i saw noone touching rails while turning ??

Imo the beveled rails are only relevant for:
1. Kite raceboards, which are ridden with really high angles, to avoid catching rails at high speeds.
2. Wide Supfoil boards, where the width over 30" is needed to gain stability and therefore the rails could catch since the boards are wide.

But for narrower wingboards around 26 - 29" wide i don't get the sense of these beveled rails.
A bevel/rail like e. g. the new Slingshot Wizzard 114, 66cm wide, paired with a tailkick makes much more sense on a wingboard, imo.
The wider bottom with harder edge should enhance the release/glide/planing and therefore earlier lift of the board.
And the tailkick covers the pumping.

What eva floats ya boat. Watching heavily edited pro vids is not an accurate picture.
Racing kites use over a metre mast and super narrow boards and do not ride waves so irrelevant.
Wingboards benefit from the release and clearance.

The vid shows exactly what i wrote about supfoiling boards.
But i didn't find Wing vids where the rider turns that hard so the rails touch or catch, be it us average joes or pros.

The narrower the board the smaller the bevels could get, because the chance of touching with the rails while turning is reduced with width.

I'm questioning this because i won't leave the design of my custom board to come to the actual mainstream design principles without understanding these shape features.

It's not about the rails touching on some designs.

You are concerned about planing, but the board never reaches planing speed in the hands of a good winger.

Newbies need a wing board to plane.

A good winger pumps onto foil below the hull planing threshold.

So then, the bottom shape is about other points. Less energy sucked out when the hull accidentally kisses the surface. A hull that is fully designed to unstick first, when pumped.

Stability is never a concern. You've got a wing ding for balance and a foil under it. So every design aspect can be about getting the board out of the way when flying and staying flying.

It is a combo of a lot of things. Many boards do not have bevels. Didn't fanatic take chimes and bevels out of the bigger sky wing boards as they do not work in light wind? The tail bevel is about not hitting when pumping. Marty at Delta Designs puts the bevels in his prone boards to help with clearance and kissing the water. His words.

Might be so they can grab the rail

Select to expand quote

DWF said..
A hull that is fully designed to unstick first, when pumped.

+1

And this also amounts for the different designs of advanced boards for SUP, surf and Wing foiling, as the pumping to get on the plane is a bit different for each.

E.g., having to unstick on a bump of a non breaking wave, or in the foam, or on the flat...

Ok, good arguments though, now i see it a little different.
What do you think about the new Starboard Wing boards, they promote their "boxy rails" without pronounced bevels (like on their windfoil boards)? They should "bounce back" better, due to the volume in the rail.
Also the new Indiana 79 RS board seems to have very reduced bevels and no tailkick, but ist marketed as a flatwater/race board.

In my opinion, the bevels help to reduce the bottom area, so if you touch down, the board releases easier. At the same time, you can have a wider board that is more stable while in the water.
Starboard has a different approach, but I have not seen one board in person. The only thing I know is that I would not buy a wing-specific board that is 6'7" @115 litre. For my 95kg I am looking for something around 110l that floats me during lulls on our lake, but it should not exceed the 6' length, as I don't want all that dead swing-weight upfront.

Ok my experience @105kg 57 years young and ok foiler:
Slingy Outwit 7 6 X 29 140l huge bevels - Light for size super stiff, awesome release, huge bevel, heaps of clearance in turns, hardly knew if you touched down, unstable for size at rest.
Fanatic 6 11 x 30+ 140l (I think) - Heavy, not that stiff, no bevel, pig to get up, caught a rail easily, if you touched the water you stopped, stable as a house.
Smik 6 8 x 29 125 l - super light, stiff, mid bevel, catch a rail every now and then but can recover, stable at rest.
Smik 6 6 x 29 120l - light, stiff, mid bevel, catch a rail every now and then but can recover, stable at rest.
Have ordered a Smik 5 6 x 29 110l wingding board.
Swing weight is the reason I have gone smaller and smaller. Bigger factor than bevels.
Go as small as you can, and bevels help for release and clearance in turns.

Select to expand quote

AlexF said..
Ok, good arguments though, now i see it a little different.
What do you think about the new Starboard Wing boards, they promote their "boxy rails" without pronounced bevels (like on their windfoil boards)? They should "bounce back" better, due to the volume in the rail.
Also the new Indiana 79 RS board seems to have very reduced bevels and no tailkick, but ist marketed as a flatwater/race board.

Volume is your friend. Think of it like this. Try sinking an igloo ice cooler. It will bounce back and toss you into the air. So yes, I agree volume does help you bounce back onto foil.

You already see a fair number of wing boards with square vertical boxy rails, with bevels and without.

Many wing board are too thin and low in volume. Thicker lets you go smaller and pop onto foil easier.

Select to expand quote

DWF said..Volume is your friend. Think of it like this. Try sinking an igloo ice cooler. It will bounce back and toss you into the air. So yes, I agree volume does help you bounce back onto foil.

You already see a fair number of wing boards with square vertical boxy rails, with bevels and without.

Many wing board are too thin and low in volume. Thicker lets you go smaller and pop onto foil easier.

I agree with this. Short and thick is the way to go.
I don't think bevels add anything to a wingboard. The "easier release" argument doesn't make sense. If you are flat water paddle starting from a swimming pool, yeah maybe. But with a wingboard, the undulations in the choppy water ensure that different parts of the underside break surface tension at varying times anyway regardless of the shape.

I'd like to see someone push the design limits on minimising length for a desired volume and target width. The sweet spot width is around 23-24 inches, no more. Length, we should be targeting as close to 4 feet. To get the desired volume you need to go to at least 5".
I tried to on my packing crate wooden board, and ended up with dimension of 4'3" x 24" x 4.75" (130 x 60 x 12cm). I don't know the exact volume but I estimate it between 82-83L. Enough for my bodyweight of about 77kg. It works really well, and is easy to get foiling.
www.instagram.com/p/CBnVBl4lo2BKY8J2ASW6Q9HPaSXqhFQ1mOC5Rs0/?hl=en

I'd love to see someone like you push the limits of this design wise. I would have been challenged in my construction to go thicker. Also the deck is flat, could add volume by having some deck rocker. So I'd love to see someone building a board of dimension 4' x 23' x 5.5", with reasonably squared off edges to end up with a volume of around 80l. The nice thing about adding thickness is you can increase the volume easily adding very little surface area, which is where most of the weight is.

I think that a no frills board with no footstrap inserts of these dimensions and DWF or other highend construction could come in less than 4kg. That would be pretty much be the ultimate knee startable wingboard in my book.

Thoughts on concave decks for winging. Seems like they could add strength and stability without weight penalty. Also might add some additional control over the foil.

I love my concave deck ONE 5'5 ( 92L) . But it's not the concave deck per se , it is the volume/ thickness in the nose ( and rails) that the design allows. When you rise to your feet from a knee start you just never bury the nose - doesn't seem to matter in the slightest if the tail is submerged. Three pumps and I'm up. From my very first session on it ( 30kts and 1.5m coastal swell) I felt that it was very stable for its dims. I'm a fan !

Had a discussion with Gunnar B on a Facebook group where he advocated for flat bottom and rounded rails. Kane DeWild is surfing these shapes too. I agree (generally always) with DWF that volume seems key.

Im about to make my step down wing board and am going dead flat, no bevel, ala the widely well reviewed Gong HIPE. If that shape can work then why bother with the effort of shaping complex bottoms and rails. As was said, I'm not near being about to lay over a 25"-27" board and touch down a rail. When I can, I'll make a new one and iterate.

DW advised I stick with flat bottoms years ago when I was first playing with SUP shaping and it's worked. I'm a lame surfer but I still have a blast (as do thousands of surfers) on a dead flat Wavestorm or Catch Surf.

Last weekend in San Diego, at a kite beach I saw a board on the beach with an Armstrong wing (couldn't find the rider at the time) that looked like it was 6"+ thick, around 4' Long and not over 23"-24" wide. Exactly what you guys are talking about.

I'll post up here when I actually get this thing built and I'll get some reviews from better riders than I lol

I have tried the inflatable Indiana wing-foilboard on flatwater. It doesn't release as early as the hardboards, you need the speed to get lift from the foil. Pumping the Board feels like all the energy just disappears.

I am not sure if you need volume to "bounce back". In case you hit the water while foiling, the speed is most likely high enough, that you do not need the volume to get back up, but you want the board to not stick to the water.

Select to expand quote

surfcowboy said..
Last weekend in San Diego, at a kite beach I saw a board on the beach with an Armstrong wing (couldn't find the rider at the time) that looked like it was 6"+ thick, around 4' Long and not over 23"-24" wide. Exactly what you guys are talking about.

If you're ever in South San Diego and there's decent wind, check out Mission Bay - south west end. There's a small group of wing foilers amongst all the kiters. We are pretty chill and mainly older guys. I ride an Armstrong foil, Sling wing 6m, and F-one rocket though it's about to be replaced. Ready for straps and to downsize.

Pasquales, I ended up near there but too far North so shadowed. Wife likes Catamaran resort so we based there. I schlogged around there (it was my first weekend on wing). I'm down there several times a year and I'll DM you next time I head down. I stay on Shelter Island and that little bay is a fun lunch break for me too but Mission Bay has more room to have fun for sure.