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pods for primates : a catalogue of surfboards in australia since 1900

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glossary : r

Rabbit Ear fin
see Butterfly fin.

Racing 16
Australian name for Tom Blake’s timber and plywood hollow board design, circa 1934.

rail lap
1. darker section on the rail of a board glassed with Volan fibreglass, commonly 1960 to 1975.
The overlapping fibreglass (from bottom onto the deck and the reverse) was trimmed with a blade, often scaring the blank (lap cut).
Addition of pigment or tint to the laminate coat resulted in the common rail overlap design that retained popularity even when spray colour became the dominant décor method.
2. post Volan overlapping of fibreglass on the rails, usually not detectable. See free-lap.

rails
the left and right edges of the board’s template, usually described in cross –section.

Attempt to illustrate rail profile.
Zenith Surfboard, shaped by Avalon's Lee Riley, circa 1974.

rail saver
6” webbing strap between board and leg rope that prevents rope snagging around fin and seriously damaging the rail of the board.
First use 1977.
Initially these were marketed as an extra to prevent the rope twisting around the fin and biting into the rail.
By the 1980s, commercial leg-ropes came fitted with a rail saver.

Rail Saver by Sure Surf Supplies
PO Box 85 Torquay 3228
$2.00 by post.
Tracks, September 1977, page 29.

Kong Cord by Newport Surf and Sport, California.
Surfing, April - May 1978, Volume 14 Number 2, page 12

rake
the curve of a fin in relation to the base.
Measurement indicated by the span - the distance from front of base to a point on the bottom that aligns with the fin tip.

References
Order forms, receipts, photographs, magazines, books, film/video, web sites, museums, collections.

registration sticker / Surf Permit :
See Surf Permit
A circular vinyl sticker usually white and one colour, to indicate the year.
Printed text includes the council area and year validated by an individually stamped serial number.
These were issued by Sydney beach side councils 1962 – 1968 as a reaction to public concerns about safety.
A similar system was in use in the US at this time.
Valid only for the beaches of the issuing council and policed by beach inspectors and surf club members (sometimes resulting in confiscation), the system was reviled by boardriders.
Perversely, the stickers are now highly prized by surfboard collectors and modern reproductions are available.
While an original registration sticker may not strictly indicate the year of a board's production (it may be somewhat earlier) importantly for research purposes, it obviously cannot be later.
Since the registration was only valid for one summer, riders would often remove the previous year's sticker and replace it with the current one.

Warringah 1961-1962

reshape
see cut down and Backyard Butchery

resin
polymerized liquid derived from oil that forms a hard plastic after an exothermic reaction induced by the addition of a catalyst.
First use on surfboards credited to Bob Simmons (USA)

Reverse T Band Stringer
a thin central stringer laminated between two thicker stringers.

reverse vee
post 1981 : bottom vee is forward of the fin(s) as opposed to at or rear of the fin(s).
Also spiral vee. ?
Both descriptions are clumbsy and misleading terminology.

Rhino/Rhino chaser/Rhino-chaser Gun
see Gun, later derivative of ‘Elephant Gun’.

rocker / Bottom curve
the bottom of the board described in profile, from nose to tail.
There is no recognized univesal method of measuring rocker.

For example James Kinstle in Surfboard Design and Construction, 1975 pages 47 to 49, notes...
Since most surfboards have little or no rocker or lift int he tail, it is a good idea to use the tail as a primary point of reference.
Moving from the tail along the bottom center line, the rocker curve will deviate away from a straight line as it curves upward toward the nose.
This may be of use for a small proportion of surfboards, but is generally next to useless.
In fairness, he does qualify this ...
Some surfboards have so much lift in the tail that by the time you get to the nose, deviations away from the straight edge are so large that is almost impossible to measure them.
However, the proposed solution is not much better...
In cases like this, choose a primary reference point that is two feet from the tail and hold a straight edge against the bottom at that point.

See also banana, camber, lift, scoop, spoon,
And
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/235086/6c4116f4ac/441000351/8f0221997c/

Gordon 'Grubby' Clarke : Rocker History, 2003.
Gordon Clark was one of the earliest figures in the development of of foam surfboard blanks and his company was the world's largest blank producer until it's closure in early 2006.
Surfboard rocker has evolved from a dependence on the way a tree grew to the modern, close tolerance blank where the rocker is very dependent on the blank manufacturer.
Rocker, and especially bottom rocker, is very difficult to measure by eye.
Therefore shapers historically have focused on outline, rails, deck shape, bottom shape, thickness, and other board features that are easy to see and measure.
(Editor's Note : I would strongly dispute the contention that "rails ... are easy to see and measure" ).
The first clue to the real importance of rocker was the so-called "magic board".
The definition of a "magic board" is a board that looks and measures just like other boards but performs a lot better than its copies.
As advanced shapers began developing tools for measuring rocker and experimenting with different rockers the biggest mystery of the "magic board" was solved.
Beginning in the late 1970's there was a clear increase in interest in precision rocker adjustments and bottom rocker measuring tools.
In the 1980's there was a dramatic increase in the number of rockers used for individual blanks.
With the development of very high strength, close tolerance blanks in the early 1990's the majority of rocker responsibility shifted to the stringer gluing process, as there was less foam available to adjust rocker.
This again increased the demand for rocker adjustments.
In 2003 the rocker template accounting system at CLARK FOAM was put on our large computer using custom software.
This was done because the number of templates required to meet the demand for custom rockers became too great to maintain manually.
http://www.clarkfoam.com/Seabase%20Clark%20Foam%20Catalogue.pdf

"Cooper and rocker machine in his bay, 1997."
Photograph : Aitionn
or Bob Cooper Collection.
Australian Surfers Journal
Volume 3 Number Two,
Autumn 2000.
Page 75.

An extensive discussion forum on rocker, of varying quality, is online at the Swaylocks site.
http://www.swaylocks.com/
Search for "measuring surfboard rocker" or try this URL ...
http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?do=search_results&search_forum
=all&search_fields=sb&search_type=AND&search_string=measure%20rocker%20method
Many methods are discussed, ranging from ...
"It seems Roger Brucker(cleanlines), Jim Phillips and Rich Harbour feel it's simply impossible to measure rocker accurately." - MaraboutSlim
to emphatic assertions of a definitive solution(s).
I actually think that one of the correspondents has the best analysis, but fails to fully explain the concept.

roto-molded

round / rounded
convex in profile,
Descriptive of...
bottom / deck / nose / rail / tail / fin / other.

routed
sections cut out of the board to allow for the inclusion of fin boxes, legrope plugs etc.

roving rail
reinforcement strips set in the blank parallel to the rail line (circa 1995).

rovings
parallel glass fibres, usually laminated at the base of the fin for structural strength.
Other applications are...
glass bead on wooden fins,
legrope bridges (circa 1974), and

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Notes on Glossary