Tips for How Surfboard Fins & Tails Work

"BRIAN FIELDS: Hey how's it going, I'm Brian Fields here at the Aussie Island in Wilmington North Carolina. We're here on behalf of Expert Village. I'm here to talk to you about picking out a surfboard and what you can do to help take care of it in the meantime. Okay now we're talking about tails of boards and also the fins. This is what we call a swallowtail. A lot of times you'll see them on a fish such as this one. You also see them though on a longboard, fun boards or shortboards as well. Usually a board with a swallow, they'll range--this is a very pretty good size swallowtail. They can be smaller as well, usually allow a board a little looser. If I turn this board around here, this is what we're going to call a quad fin. Quad because of four fins as you see. And the fins in many boards can come right out. This is what you call future system where unscrew this and the fin can pull right out. Boards also can be glassed with glass tin fins that way to give them little more support not as much flexibility. Right here you have another swallowtail but when I turn this board around you'll see it only has--well it has a slot for four fins as well. Some people might choose to only put two in and that's what you'd call a twin fin. So anytime you hear somebody talking about a twin fin, you'll only going to have two fins rather than four, three or one. Two fins, what it's going to do is it's going to be a little looser than say a board with three fins, allow you to skate around a little bit easier. Okay then here is a standard shortboard, when I flip it over--okay this what we refer to as a thruster--a majority of shortboards are thrusters meaning three fins. You can see this one's a future setup also, it hasn't been put in yet but pop your fins in and you're ready to go. The tail right here, this is what you're going to call a rounded pintail, it's just a regular pintail would come to a more of a point. You might find that on more of a gun whereas a rounded pin, it's going to let you--give you a little more hold in the wave as you're getting down that line. So good tail for around here and pretty much anywhere you're going to go and travel on a shortboard. Another shortboard right here, thruster as well, three fins. When I flip it over, you can see the tail rounded edges but a little more squared off, that's what we call squash tail, that's kinda stereotypical tail. You'll see that on I'd say probably the majority of surfboards especially shortboards you see that is, like I say squash tail, good tail. A lot of the tails are just going to come down to the preference of the surfer, what you like, how "skatey" you like your board to feel or how tight you want it to hold. All I can say is preference of the surfer right there."