When is it time to look at new fins?

[benjl]

Hey guys

I'm a relative newbie to surfing and just have what ever fins came with the boards I brought (FCS G5 or M5) fins from memory or MX side fins in my quad with M5's.

A question for you more advanced guys- Just how much difference do the more expensive fins make and at what point is it worth upgrading to them?
Assuming I stayed with the same size of fin to keep things constant, would I gain anything from going to more expensive ones or only really worth it when i'm far down the track with turns etc? I'm about 72kg and at the moment only surfing 1-4 ft max waves so the M5's are about right for my weight and wave size.

I can't seem to find any other threads which are this straight forward for any other newbie surfers looking at fin scenarios.
Any feedback would be great to help build my surfing knowledge.

Chur!

[drowningbitbybit]

I seem to be in the minority here but I don't believe changing yours fins for more expensive ones will make the slightest bit of difference to an average surfer. Just like you can buy any Product A or the much more expensive Product B With MaxiFlex TechWidget, it's mostly marketing and convincing you that you need to have it.

I use the cheapest fins available (basically cheap rip-offs of FCS shapes), which happens to be made locally, and I know for a fact that a lot of the shapers round here supply their boards with the same cheap fins and it's not as if the shapers round here are amateurs....

If you're good enough to be able to tell that your fin isn't doing what you need it to do (which is not the same as blaming them for what you can't do ), then it's time to think about new fins but until then, there'll be no benefit in upgrading.

[jaffa1949]

Benjl , at your stage in surfing you don't need to consider fins, you need only to get your basic skills better. Fins will not speed up this process! Nothing is available to make you surf better, just getting your skills up is the way to go.

Proof of this good surfers can surf even a door well, poor surfers can't make a good board go well!.

If,a,product made people brilliant surfers its sales would skyrocket!
Just go surfing improve and learn, learn and improve!

[surf patrol]

Everything jaffa says is true.

[benjl]

Haha- that dude surfing the door and table is pretty awesome. Good NZ / local song to go with it too!

Thanks for the feedback, i'm not meaning specifically for me as I'm no where near good enough to warrant new fins but just based on your experience do the more expensive fins actually make any / much noticeable difference over standard ones like M5 etc?

We've got a cyclone rolling us at the moment so looks like my planned long-weekend of surf is out the window!
The surf report is predicting 4m high set faces on Monday

[dtc]

If the fins you have are reasonably stiff (ie not rubber/soft fins), then changing to a different set will make a minor but not much difference. the fins might be stiffer or a slightly different sweep or something, but you are maybe talking 5% or 10% difference - seems like a lot, but for most people its not really (they arent surfing to the 90th percent of their current board anyway) and the 10% might not be beneficial, it might be making it worse!

If you are changing fin size, then you can notice the difference almost straight away. If you are running 4xM5 quads, that is quite a lot of fin. Changing to 4xM3 you will probably notice the board will be much looser but less drive. This, again, may or may not be what you want or need.

A lot of my friends have gone down the experiment with fins route, ending up with 15 sets of fins before deciding that size is the main variant, not the rest of the stuff. Again, for good surfers there is a difference but for us average folk not really.

If you want to experiment with fins, then you could try either running the board as a twin or running smaller fins. I wouldnt bother changing the fins you have for performance reasons. But if you want a different colour or whatever, then its your money, go for it.

[benjl]

Hey guys

I had a bit of a fin experiment in the weekend and the results surprised me! Especially as most people said that beginners wouldn't notice the differences.
My usual board recently has been a 6'3 anderson fish with quite thin performance rails- i've always used it with the standard fcs g5 fins that it came with and it shocked me right from the start at how agile and manouverable it was.

I decided to take the fins off a 6'10 Bruce hansel board that I got a few months back and try them out on the Andrerson. The fins on that looked remarkably similar to the fcs G5's although not as raked back and probably a touch more narrow with less of a curve going to the raked point. Those fins also looked to be a kind of glass composite or something as they look fiberous / meshy and not just plastic like the fcs g5's.

So I tried them out on Saturday in some of the best 3-5ft conditions I've seen here. The waves were big, heavy and powerful.
The difference I felt was instant, on my very first wave I nailed the drop and proceeded down to a bottom turn. It was at this point the whole board felt horrible and impossible to turn under the force of the wave face. It felt like night and day difference compared to how the board normally feels with the other fins.
I continued with them all afternoon and stuck every single drop on about the biggest waves i've surfed before but they were very hard to turn with and made the board feel a touch like it was made of granite or stone. Just really unresponsive. I was still a little shocked that I hadn't bailed off a wave once all day despite the size and power etc (for my ability). These fins seemed to make the board go great and very stable but very difficult to turn with.
I returned the next day in almost identical conditions but instead switched the fins round to having my usual g5's on the side fins but a fcs g3000 on the middle fin as I had it spare. I thought it might losen up the back a little as it was a touch smaller than the g5's and also had a little bit more rake.
It did exactly that and more! On the first wave that I tried to turn, I almost skidded the board right from under me as it was so agile!
I spent the majority of the day trying to gain my balance back from the previous day. The board was just so much more responsive.

I've attached some photos of the fins for you to see- the smaller, more translucent one is the glass / composite looking fin ( I have no idea what it is or what brand it is).
Based on this experiment, I would love a fin with the stability of the glass fins but with the added drive and the turning ability of the g5 fins.
Would any of you have any suggestions if these exist or what I should look for? I was just so surprised at how much difference these fins made considering they were so close in shape!

[jaffa1949]

Great you are sensitive enough to see the differences, the difference is in the the inherent flex of the fins under pressure of the turn, since you were also on the edge of great waves in more challenging conditions, the benefits and failings of each type becomes apparent.

Quite often the plastics tend to release pressure in the turn by bending so loss of power and control results as the force goes into the bending. Stiff glass fins will tend to track (hold in on drops and hold a line) if you can adapt to either type of fin and direct your surfing nto the shape you want it to be on the day, you have advanced well in your skills.
Quite often it will take a number of sessions to tune to an adaptation in in fins, rails or length and shape of a board, not so long if you get the specific set up that is just right for you and it just clicks.
One of the great OH WOW moments of surfing

Another great moment is when a forumite says I went better than you thought I would ( what would you guys know any way? )

[oldmansurfer]

Well that is interesting. I think fins are important but you can learn to use almost any board and fins. It may take a while but sooner or later you can figure it out and maybe the other fins will have benefits in certain situations. That changing fins made it hard to turn says something. I have only had one board that I never learned to use well and grew to love it (a single fin fish). I haven't yet messed around with the fins on my current board although I just bought a box fin converter so I can do a thruster configuration with fins made for that. I still don't want to change the fins because I am enjoying learning to use this board with the quad setup and have not found the limits of what it can do yet.

[drowningbitbybit]

Interesting stuff!

Here's a thing (this isn't meant as a put-down by the way - just something to add to the discussion)...
If you searched back far enough, there'll be a thread somewhere with me and SinistaPenguin (whatever happened to Sinista?) discussing fins, and me saying about how much difference fins made to my 7'4 funboard I had at the time. I'd just swapped from some "mini-mal fins" to some "shortboard fins" and it made a huge difference.

These days, however, I change my fins and while I can feel that there is a difference, it doesn't make a blind bit of difference to my surfing.

Okay, if I change from big fins to small fins, I might find one set turns a little easier than the other set, and I can feel the difference between a quad set-up and a thruster set-up when it comes to hold, but I don't think I'd even be able to tell the difference between expensive fins and cheap fins though.

So either I've got less sensitive (perfectly possible - I'm a clumsy oaf in the water) or now I just ride around the characteristics of the board/fin combination.

[dtc]

I go with Jaffa - one fin set is more flexible than another, which you notice even though the fins are roughly the same size.

If you like the smaller rear fin, there are some glass fin sets you can buy that have that set up (KS 2.1, JW PG) which you could try out if you want to spend the money. Basically a twin board (fast) but with some thruster elements (ease of turning) Some stores have testing centres, where you can borrow a set of fins for the day - might be worth seeing if any stores around you do this.

I've actually gone the reverse, on my bigger board - large centre fin and small side fins. But thats a more traditional set up for larger boards.

[benjl]

Yeah it was definately a much bigger difference than I was anticipating to feel and has opened up my eyes a little as to what differences fins can make! I was just lucky enough to have a few different fins that had come standard on my boards.

I think you are right about the flex properties. Whilst they both feel pretty stiff once I put all my muscle behind trying to flex them in my hands, the plastic g5's definately gave a little compared to the glass one which still didn't budge or flex. It felt like a pretty minor difference but I guess once there's a heap of wave pressure on them then that difference would be magnified.
I found my experiment of using the g3000 fin running in the back of the thruster as a minor 2+1 set up was just too lose and unstable.
I was wondering how the board might perform if I was to run the same g5 fins as side fins but instead use the glass fin as the middle fin?
The added track that those glass fins gave was pretty awesome. I got my first cheer from another random surfer who saw me make one of the bigger drops and ride it out haha. Gnarly!

Would most aftermarket fsc fins be more or less stiff than plastic fins?

I've also got some fcs gx side-bite fins from my quad set up on a different board that I could play with as well!

Too bad the surf is now horrible all week

[dtc]

Stiff fins provide more stability - or, looking at the other side of the coin, make it harder to make sharp turns. They offer more drive. So your experience was textbook! More drive, more stability - and harder to turn. And then, smaller fins = looser board - again textbook.

I do agree with Old Man, however - find a set that feels 'about right' and then stick with it. Obviously if you cant turn your board or you are sliding out, then change; but you can go down the fin rabbit hole a very long way for, perhaps, not much additional benefit. Not saying dont buy a good set of fins, or dont experiment, of course.

In terms of flex, moulded fins ('composite') are definitely softer/have more flex; although they are usually thicker so that overcomes some of the flex issues.

Performance Glass / fibreglass are stiffer, but they can be designed to have more flex in the tip ie have a very thin tip, because the material is stronger. So generally stiffer, but not always by as much as you may expect. And, of course, manufacturers use multiple different methods - here is the official FCS statement (I suspect you probably want 'performance glass' fins)


Ultra Light
Ultra light was developed by FCS to create the lightest possible fin with suprerior flex properties while ensuring strength and foil accuracy. By minimising weight without sacrificing response of flex and strength. Ultra-Light Epoxy is our lead construction process delivering the ultimate in performance.

Performance Core
Performance Core material and construction is designed to deliver the feeling of a traditional fibreglass fin with the added performance of reduced weight. The RTM (Resin Transfer Moulding) process produces a lightweight fin with remarkable flex, a smooth feel and an impressive aesthetic.

Performance Glass
Performance Glass material characteristics and flex pattern are identical to traditional fibreglass fins offering a stiff base with subtle responsive tip flex, amazing aesthetics and proven durability. PG fins are the perfect transition fin for surfers moving from fixed fins to the convenience, accuracy and performance of FCS.

Glass Flex
Glass Flex has been formulated to replicate the flex and memory properties of hand layed fibreglass. It's advantages over other composite fin materials include stiffness, a more positive flex pattern (nice tip flex, little base flex) and remarkable flex memory. The precision of the injection moulding process ensures the highest accuracy in geometry in each fin produced.

[oldmansurfer]

One of the videos I posted recently of Larry Bertlemann shows him talking about his wobbly single fin. It was revolutionary at the time to have a fin that gave way to the water. I am not sure if I will ever be a good enough surfer to where fin selection is going to make or break my waves....but you never know. Lately I have felt as though I am no longer a beginner, now I am intermediate level surfer.....give me more time and who knows.....? Just guessing but I will probably start messing with my fins in a year or two. Then maybe I can say something more meaningful about it but still benjl's post almost makes me want to mess around with my fins already .....almost... Very interesting stuff.

[benjl]

Thanks for all that good info DTC. Funnily enough I will probably end up just sticking with the g5's that were originally on it as they seemed to provide the best balance between hold and turning ability from the two set ups I trialled.
perhaps i'll save the stiffer fins for bigger days when I need more track. Because that board was from Bali, chances are that they're meant for bigger waves anyway which might bring out more of their flex.

One question I do have though is whether any of you know the difference between fcs G5 and M5 fins?? There must be a difference or else why would they have two models for the same fin but I can't find anything on the net about the difference!!!

[dtc]

The G5 is actually the 'FG5' which might have been confusing. Same template but different material

Thus (for what its worth, some more dodgy maker blurbs):

The FCS G-Series Series fins are advanced injection molded Fins. Similar to the FG-series, the FCS M3 Fins utilise the same templates as the FG3, while the FCS M5 Fins utilise the same templates as the FG5 and the FCS M7 Fins utilise the same templates as the FG7. The FCS M3, M5 and M7 fins are some of FCS's first fins made from glass flex: FCS's advanced composite material molded stiffer and more responsive, with the flexing properties of fiberglass and their new foil technology which will offer superior drive and hold!

The FCS F-Series fin line, the FG3, FG5 and FG7 have unique, strong, ultra-light fiberglass construction that deliver a performance fin for surfers who feel too much flex in composite fins and not enough in carbon-lites. The progressive, engineered flex is complemented by optimized asymmetric foil sections for maximum hydrodynamic efficiency.

The result is more speed, better response, increased acceleration, more hold and drive through carving turns, and more fluid rail-to-rail. Available in the proven G3000, G5000 and G7000 templates, the FG3; FG5 and FG7 Foil Fins will suit most surfers, boards and conditions.