"Flex Boards" and Torsional Flex
 

I was thinking about the different ways a board can flex, besides length wise and was trying to wrap my head around what would happen in various scenarios of flex.

Particularly, I was thinking about torsional flex. On occasion I have heard about torsional flex being a bad thing, at least for some riders, depending on what riding-styles they want the board to accentuate.

the explanations of torsional flex ruining a good hard fast edge seems to make sense, but personal experience as well as experiences of some others' seems to tell me that it is not the case, experience says to me "that flex boards butter on initiation of an edge but get stronger and hold fast as you really lay on edge" (paraphrasing). How then do I still feel like a flex board holds a good edge?

In theory, on edge, I picture the rail of the board, especially close to the tail, bending upward with the force of the water against it, creating a large, mellow bevel, that progressively lengthens and increases in angle as the edge gets stronger... or as the edge attempts to get stronger, but kinda fights against itself. I don't associate a "bevel" edge with "strength," but rather "forgiveness." On a side-note: this might explain my personal belief that flex contributes to these boards' remarkable forgiveness despite appearance. IMO
In experience, I was thinking that when the edge bends up like this that the fin on that edge essentially starts to angle itself deeper into the water, making up for some of that loss of solid edge? Also the bending of the board's edge is not only creating this "bevel", but it is also creating a reversed cupped edge? Could this be helping, deterring from something? Or am I picturing this totally wrong? It’s hard enough to explain and I might not have done so sufficiently.

I am just having a little trouble wrapping the fluid dynamics and physics of this around my brain. But at the same time I was really having fun with it and entertaining it with my curiosity.


anyone have any revelations on this matter, torsional flex, flex width wise, flex limited to the tips and tails, or any other types of flex and how they react and change a ride? Broaden the matter beyond the common limited subjects of just pop, landings, and rail presses.

You definitely have an obsession with the whole flex thing :D If you want to see a good vid on the torsional flex ideology, Butch explains it in the promo vid for the conspiracy... definitely a board to demo if you get a chance

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apywVBHxjy8

I think since the way the wood stringers are laid in the board to flex you'll get width wise would be minimal.... I think at the tip/tail there is going to far more then the center seeing as the ends are so thin and have much less strength. I know I can bend my slingshot tail making a really mellow "C" shape with just my hands.... which if it happened on the water would provide extra hold (like the angled fins on hyperlite/ronix/etc worked) I can't really see that direction of flex being a major factor when they were designing the board... it maybe just icing on the cake