Flex

Stiffer fins are responsive but are more difficult to turn while flexible fins allow spring out of turns, but can be noodley and kill your drive if they are too flexible. Flex can make the difference between a board being too stiff or perfect, or making a late drop vs rag-dolling down the face of a wave.

We design the flex for each fin by combining the latest materials available with advanced construction techniques to create the best flex for each fin. Stiffer fins react quickly but can flutter and make a board feel hard to turn if they are too stiff. Fins with flex allow you to load up and are more forgiving, but can be noodley and kill your drive if they are too flexible. There is a critical window of flex for each template and foil that will be best for each fin.

We design our fins to have stiff bases, because this is where the power and drive come from. A good fin should have progressive flex. Meaning as you move towards the tip the flexibility increases. We have a test fixture and we flex our fins in two places to make sure that they have a minimum stiffness in the base, and the tip has a flex within a prescribed range for each construction.

Construction

We can take the same materials and use them differently in the construction of a fin to get different performance qualities. The Blackstix are designed with a springy twist in the tip, while the Techflex are designed to open out from the middle.

It is impossible to look at the shape, foil, and flex of a fin independently. They all work together to create the feel under your feet.

The Blackstix for example are designed to feel lively and to generate speed when you might be held back by the conditions. The V2 foil carbon fiber base creates lift, and the tip has less carbon so that the tip is snappy and flexible. The tip is designed to rotate perpendicular to the stringer during turns springing back releasing energy at the end of turns. Picture pulling back a bow and then releasing the arrow at the end of each bottom turn.

The Techflex on the other hand, has a flat foil instead of a V2 so we designed the fin to open out so the cant will increase as the fin flexes in the middle (where there is no carbon). This enables the fin to generate more lift. The carbon in the tip makes the tip extremely responsive.

Materials