How has engineering / design changed with the current trends (rail riding)?
Boards that are designed for rail riding are a great example of changes in design although the fundamentals of the engineering remain constant. Last summer Ihad one of our engineering interns sit down with one of our AmArmy riders and asked them to brainstorm on what they needed in a board for rails. Both these guys are topnotch riders and skaters and knew way better than I did how a board needed to perform on rails. The first rail boards companies put out were designed to be softer between the bindings to wrap and lock on rails. But these guys experienced that the soft mid section boards were hard to transition through the gnarly kinked rails that they were riding. They evolved the thought until they ended up designing and developing the Artifact series boards – stiffer in between the feet for kinked rails, and softer on the nose and tail for buttering. It has a nice stable foundation between the feet rather than the typical rail boards soft flexy one. It was a change or evolution in
