Jesse Tabell on an Eveley 9'6" ST noserider

Jesse Tabell at Manly Beach.

Board: Eveley ST Noserider Fin: Eveley 10” Classic

The best conditions for surfing are often at first light

One easy way to reduce waste is to buy products with a long and useful life. We pride ourselves on supplying high quality fins that will stand the test of time. Pro Glass fins are manufactured using the same materials and methods established in the 1960’s. When you buy one of these fins you know that it has a lifetime of use ahead of it and will not need to be added to landfill. Display it as object d’art when you are finished with it, or simply pass it on to someone else who will treasure the past. There’s no point adding bioresin to the mix if it’s just going to fall apart. Contact Eveley Surf if you have any of our fins you no longer want. We will send you a free shipping label so we can recover the product and find it a new home.

Pete getting the seven foot Murphy on rail in Japan.

4.5" Twin Semi-Keels, natural colour Pro Glass. FCS compatible.

These natural colour keels are made from Pro Glass which provides a rigid flex for the serious surfer. With 4.5" of depth and a 6.75” base these fins will provide significant drive while the template shape allows for speed and power down the line. Available in FCS, FCSII and Futures compatible.

Ultra Lite Xtreme Pro Carbon fins are manufactured using a high-density PU foam core wrapped in genuine carbon fiber composite for extreme strength. When you are ready to fly these are the fins that will get you there. They are the lightest strong fins available.

4.8" / 4.3" Controller Split Keel quad set of four fins, black colour Pro Glass. Futures compatible.

This quad set of four fins is designed for the classic wide tailed retro fish boards with a quad fin set up. The large surface area combined with the upright rake of the rear fins creates both drive and maneuverability.

This is our new stock colour 10” International 4A center fin. The camo colour features an irregular pattern making no two fins the same, with a subdued sanded matt finish. With this fin you will find yourself immersed in the world of kelp and sea grasses. As no two fins are the same the photo is indicative only.

We are often asked if our center fins will fit a certain sliding fin box. Lots of manufacturers make plastic sliding fin boxes and if you squeeze the sides before they are fitted in the board you find there is a degree of flex. Also, some have a contoured slot shape where the fin’s metal pin locates. If the corner of the tab near the pin is not curved enough it may need to be filed a little, so it doesn’t foul the base of the fin box while its being inserted and slid to its required position.

Each manufacturer has their own tooling for making the moulds in which boxes are formed, meaning that the width of the slot into which the fins tab is inserted varies a little from one manufacturer to another. Similarly the depth of the slot varies. Thirdly the width of the slot may reduce when it is fitted in the board as the resin used to secure it in place heats up as it cures and softens the plastic causing it to distort a little. Dummy fins should be inserted in the box as it is resined in, but if this is not done or the dummy fin used has a narrow tab some fins might be a very tight fit. Some board manufacturers use a dremel tool to make the slot wider when this happens, and some surfers file down the width of the tab to fit the box.

If the fin feels loose in the box after the screw has been tightened it may be because it doesn’t reach to the bottom of the box or the slot in the box is too wide. An easy fix is to fit a small length of 5mm plastic tube under the fin which squashes down when the screw is engaged into the plate, taking up the any space under the fin. A small piece of this tube can be placed under the screw plate to raise it if the screw will not engage the plate when it sits too low in the box. Alternatively, some surfers have added a small amount of resin to the sides of the fin tab to make it wider.

Luckly most fins fit just fine, but there are so many variables this cannot be guaranteed in all cases.

The shape and size of the surfboard fin, and the amount of flex, will greatly change the board’s performance. The foil is the curve applied to the face of the fin. By applying a curved surface on the outside face of the fin and leaving inside face flat, the the fin will generate a sideways movement in the same way as an airplane wing generates lift. This is the principle used in multi-fin surfboards. The curved outside faces pull the board to the side of greatest rail engagement creating greater maneuverability. Center fins have the same foil on both sides which generates forward thrust. With quad fin sets the question of greater thrust can be addressed by using rear fins with foil applied to both sides or greater maneuverability by using rear fins with flat inner foil.

Pro Glass fins are the preference of serious surfers because they don’t flex much, which maintains the integrity of the foil which generates speed and control. When fins flex the shape of the foil is contorted away from its optimum, and the return to its original shape is unpredictable. The last thing a competitive surfer wants is to be unsure how the equipment is going to perform. Pro Glass fins are cut from slabs of solid fiberglass which are hand laminated, resisted flexing and twisting. The foil is either hand shaped or CNC machined. Other manufacturing methods such as resin transfer molding technology, embodying a lightweight core with an integrated solid fibreglass casing and base for strength, generate controlled flex. Eveley Surf refers to this type of fin as Performance Core. There are other molded fins using fiberglass infused nylon plastics or simply molded plastic fins. The less rigid the fin, the more it will flex and distort leading to unpredictable performance and failed maneuvers.

Futures Fins was started in California in 1996 by the Longo brothers. Futures fins have a single tab which fits neatly into the Futures fin plug. The bar at the back edge of the plug locates into the notch in the rear of the fin tab. Once the fin is fully depressed into the plug the fin is secured in place with a grub screw located at the front of the plug. This creates a very strong and secure fin system. Unlike FCS which builds the cant angle into the plugs and makes the tabs straight with the fins, Futures fins have the cant angle built into the fin instead. Futures plugs are made with 3/4” depth for leading fins and 1/2” depth for trailing fins. As there is no cant angle built into the plugs there is no need for designated left and right plugs as with FCS. Eveley Surf supplies both Futures compatible fins and FCS compatible fins.

Futures compatible fins from Eveley Surf with 1/2" tabs.

FCS is both a brand and a type of fin system which allows fins to be fitted or removed at will. The original two-tab fins were designed in Australia last century and are both simple and effective. More recently FCS developed FCSII, a more sophisticated system that allows the fins to clip in and out of the plugs without the need for securing screws. The original FCS two-tab fins can be used in the FCSII plugs with a compatibility kit available from Eveley Surf. FCSII fins cannot be fitted to boards with the original FCS plugs.

Who would have thought that we need to educate people about 2 + 1 fins! Seems some don’t know the difference from a thruster set of three fins.

Usually, 2 + 1 fins consist of a two smaller side fins with either Futures or FCS compatible tabs, and a larger center fin with a sliding fin box tab.

A thruster set consists of three fins usually all the same height and all having either Futures or FCS tabs. Sometimes the center fin in the thruster set may be a different size to the side fins.

So if your board has three fin boxes the same you need a thruster set, but if the center box is a sliding fin box you need a 2 + 1 set.

Many people mix and match center fins with side bite fins or small twin fins to create a 2 + 1 fin set, sometimes even using rear quad fins as side fins. At Eveley Surf we offer all the options including dedicated sets with matching colors and finishes.

2 + 1 fin setup in an Eveley performance longboard. This one has Futures compatible Pro Glass side fins and a larger Pro Glass center fin fitted in a sliding fin box.

Centre fins were the original control mechanism which stopped surfboards from simply slipping down the face of the wave. The earliest ones were a simple wooden skeg which generally had an angled leading edge to stop the buildup of debris such as seaweed. Locating them at the rear of the board guaranteed that the main direction of movement would be forward thus the rear located skeg allowed considerable control.

An early example of a timber center fin or skeg

Eveley Surf noserider at Manly Beach, traditional hang ten logger

In the mid and late 1940’s Bob Simmons, a Californian surfer, began developing improvements in the design of surfboards and fins. By inventing Styrofoam, ply and fibreglass sandwich construction, modern lower line 60/40 rail shapes, concave bottom contours and twin fins, Simmons changed surfboard design creating truly performance-oriented surfboards.

Bob Simmons twin fin, reportedly built in 1948

By the early 1960’s the Malibu surfboard had become popular following the advent of Polyurethane foam which could be directly coated with Polyester resin reinforced with fiberglass for strength. The advantage was that Polyurethane foam doesn’t dissolve on contact with Polyester resin which was a problem with Styrofoam.

At this stage the most popular fin used was the D fin which gave very good directional stability but poor maneuverability because of the long base and large surface area.

An early example of a plywood D fin fitted to a fiberglass Malibu surfboard

By the mid 1960’s the influence of California’s George Greenough had changed the design of center fins. The length of the base was found to maintain drive while reducing the area of the tip allowed for more rapid rail to rail transitions greatly increasing maneuverability. Typical of this era fins were hand cut and foiled from solid slabs of laid up volan fiberglass and resin and permanently fitted to the surfboard using fiberglass rovings and resin as reinforcement. These fins were typically about 12 inches deep.

In 1967 some manufacturers started experimenting with removable fins. The one in the photo below is fitted into a 8’4” vee bottom board. This one was developed by Tom Morey in California, and used what was called the Wonderbolt to jamb the fin into the box. The box was hand laid up using volan fiberglass and resin, which must have had a dummy fin inserted as it is a perfect fit. The leading edge of the box is angled to accept an angled leading edge of the fin tab, with the fin being fitted with the wonderbolt wind out screw to hold the fin firmly in the box. This fin is hand laid up volan and resin and is almost 14 inches when fitted.