waterway glide vs. leaderfins hyper

[Mullins]

I have a suspicion that the folding may be related to the way the footpockets attach to the blade. As per your picture Andy, as soon as you introduce any lateral flex at all, that's how the blade will bend under load. There is clearly a bit of tension on my blade when it is at rest, and if you want to bend it by hand you need to 'snap' it out of its slight upwards/concave curve. Even if you hold it by the footpockets and wave it up and down it still folds like it's doing in the picture, even with no water pressure involved. I think the footpockets are the culprit....

[Mullins]

Just had another play with it... the behaviour of the blade does seem to depend heavily on how you hold/bend the two footpockets. I think a rigid plate between them would go a long way to fixing the folding problem. At the moment they're completely independent of one another.

[Kars]

Hi Fonduset, nice to hear you joining the discussion, or rather exploration of the ideal monofin

I heart people say helps to keep your 'tail' centerd and prevents a blade from sliding under the pressure sideways. In a way it becomes forgiving, and allows for less coordination effort.

But for me the feeling of drag with such fins is very distracting, and I think that those 'ear rails', little waterguiding fins paralel to the swimming direction mounted on de outer edges are principally better to have. Serving the same goal to reduce the sliding and allowing for a little less coordination effort.

Kars

[Kars]

And Dave I think you got a point about the swimming technique.
At the WC depth in Sharm I discussed with Timo Jattu about technique and monofins. And learned the way the legs are used - keeping the knees together - is important.
There is indeed no rigit connection between those footpockets and a 'anti-folding' reinforcement may be a very good solution.

I wonder if the big monofin companies like Specialfins and Waterway are watching these type of discussions we have here. Though the Freedivermarked may be small, a freediver is generally creative and looking for understanding and improvements with the courage to try new things. Making it an intresting group for experimentation and information feedback gathering.

Kars

[Fondueset]

It makes sense and seems obvious - but I wonder if some degree of flex is not appropriate. I have a humble waterway nemo - hard stiffness - and it does not seem to flex sideways at all. Of course the full footpockets are less efficient - which I can feel - particularly during sprints; but they seem very firmly connected on this fin. I don't notice any tendency to side-slip.

[Kars]

I find the Nemo's intresting too, with the less rubber and the angle.
But I would love to them with 'classic' WW footpockets, a full footsole support, and a 30 degree angle

Nice pictures!

Kars

[Fondueset]

I'd like to try a fin with more angle - also more efficient pockets. I really enjoy using the mono with minimum movement.

[ADR]

Dave - There is heavy reinforcing between the footpockets. If you pull them apart, not that I suggest you do as I already I have, you will find a heavy copper plate integrated between and under them. Well the Waterway Glide had one and I had to attach it to the hybrid model I then created (pics in the other thread)

http://forums.deeperblue.net/monofin...st-reason.html

Fonduset - If I could get a Waterway Glide or Hyperfin with a 30degree footpocket and a fin bend profile like your pics I'd be a very happy freediver. Not the slightest hint of v-bend and under full load - awesome. Unfortunately my waterway glide was horrible and my Hyperfin better but still nothing that great. Lots of money spent and still not the right equipment.

[Mullins]

If there is a reinforcing plate in there it must be pretty soft, because I can bend it just as easily as the rest of the blade! There is nothing stopping me folding the fin in half by rotating the footpockets away from one another. Well, apart from fear of breaking an expensive fin.

[ADR]

Here are a couple of pics of essentially the same fin but with completely different bending properties. The one with the orange on top of the footpockets is Ant William's Hyperfin - an earlier model. The one with the black on top is mine. The orange one does not suffer from v-bend while the black one suffers a lot (similar to the pic dave posted) Footpockets are very similar and blades are the same stiffness although the shape is quite different. The more the 'shoulders' of the fin are cut in the less support the fin has to resist the v bend. You can see the black footpocket fin has much more shoulder cut than the orange. You only have to imagine an extreme side cut to the shoulders to visualise the forces that would cause a v-bend (simple answer is wider fin through the shoulders)

Now if you still are not seeing the difference have a look at the next pic(apologies for the low quality pic) It is in my humble opinion one of the worst blades sitting on top of one of the best. You can see the side cut difference, ignore the tip cut offs as that was just me trying to solve the bending. The thing that really throws me here is that they are both Waterway blades. The one underneath is just superb in its performance and bending profile (model 1 LD) the one on top is the Waterway Glide....or atleast the one they sent me and is horrible.

And my last attempt to really convince you is the Glide footpockets on that original glide black blade v folded like nothing I have seen before whereas now that the same footpockets are on a Model 1 blade there is no v-bend ....of course I have attached another pic of the hybrid fin. Ignore the holes in it as that is the subject of another thread.

[ADR]

Sorry Dave, I didnt see your post and you might be right as I was assuming that as the Waterway had a plate there so would the Hyperfin. I still dont think it would make the difference given what I just posted.

[jome]

Soo...Has anyone tried a badly bending blade and a good one side to side in some kind of objective measure. Such as maximum distance, depth or speed in sprint?

How big is the difference?

I would also be interested has anyone been in contact with the manufacturer (waterway or hyperfins) and asked if this is how they intended the blade to work?

[Walrus]

I'm with Andy on the folding edges problem, I think it definitely has a lot to do with the shape of the fin and the 'shoulder' part. Apart from the shape, I'm thinking the layering and more important the reinforcement must play a big part too. If you look at a waterway fin you can see the pattern of where there is more fiberglass on top of the normal layers, the ribs that run down the blade and the reinforcement on the shoulder. If you compare a waterway LD1 to a MD1 it's not just the blade thickness that's different, you can see the MD1 has a much longer reinforcement on the shoulder part and different 'ribs'. Would be interesting to see the shape of this reinforcement on the hyper and glidefins, well you would have to rip the wings off to look.

So far it seems the bad concave/edge folding problem only happens with the soft fins......
Any one out there got a stiff or medium fin with this problem ?

With the softer fins perhaps some of the monofin makers haven't changed the blade design enough between the soft/medium and stiff models and just add more or less layers for the whole blade. So perhaps the really soft fins need a minimum amount of shoulder thickness of fibreglass to stop getting the bad concave. It could partly explain why Evita seems to have no problems with folding edges having a medium stiff glide fin vs a soft/long distance, the shoulder of the fin would be a a lot stiffer. The long distance/soft fins may only be a small percentage of the fins they sell so maybe they haven't got enough feedback from people ?


It's funny that the humble waterway LD1 has none of the concave problems or bending of the footpockets. It's just a blade with very basic footpockets glued on, in fact the blade itself forms the bottom part of the foopocket. It doesn't need any extra reinforcements apart from what's built into the blade.


Cheers,
Wal

[Mullins]

Originally Posted by jome

Soo...Has anyone tried a badly bending blade and a good one side to side in some kind of objective measure. Such as maximum distance, depth or speed in sprint?

I wish I could. However I would first need to find one that works properly!

[ADR]

Jome - yes I have as I train 2-3 times a week with Ant Williams. Half a stroke per 25m difference consistently for me with Ant's Hyper fin compared to mine. 5 with mine and 4.5 with his. That's a 12.5 precent difference. In most sports anything above a couple of percent is worth serious attention.

Waterway seem to be manufacturing the glide with that blade I posted but also some people here have posted pics of their glide blades and they are certainly standard model 1 or 2 blades with decent shoulders and all the funky layering that Walrus was talking about. I suggest that those fins like my Hybrid are bending in an acceptable fashion. Here is a previous pic from Martin of his girlfriends waterway glide fin. Very Very different from what I received and I bet it is a great fin.

Strangely Hyperfins seem to be doing the same. Mine, Daves and BennyBs are big sidecut fins with horrid v-bends whereas Alexey's new fin and Ant's old one are fine with wider shoulders.

This thread of Alexey at the worlds shows a Hyperfin as I would have expected it to look and perform. Alexey, I will pay what it is worth and some for that fin if you can hear me. - seriously http://forums.deeperblue.net/freediv...freediver.html


...and the pic of Martin's girlfriend's Glide fin (the one with the black blade)