The PHD Volan is the collective brainchild of Kirk Putnam & Brian Hilbers. For years, this duo had been collaboratively tinkering with historical surfboard designs in a quest to design the perfect shape. This fin was designed along the way to accompany boards of the displacement hull variety; it excels in combination with thin rails and vee to flat bottoms.
This fin’s fuller-than-normal leading edge, combined with its slender tip and full-base, translates into smooth rail turns and the ability to harness maximum power. From a design standpoint, its thick leading edge provides the structural integrity needed to support its narrow tip. Crafting this fin out of Volan–with it’s strong structural integrity–enables us to create this special foil design. It would be far too flexy made of any other material, but with Volan it retains a stiff and powerful flex.
PHD reviews note that this fin: feels good at low speed, has heaps of power with the stiffer flex, has proper hold in all phases of a turn, and overall has a perfectly balanced feel. It makes for an epic ride on down-the-line type waves. Check out the PHD Volan featured in our short film “Meridiem Odyssey“.
Our Volan fins are fine-tuned with precision foils as well as proper flex. Crafted with a labor of love at our factory in Santa Barbara, CA, these fins undergo the strictest quality control. Our Volan panels are meticulously hand-laid and templated ensuring optimal weave orientation and superior strength, with flex coming more from the body rather than just the tip. This enhances speed and projection off the bottom and through turns, making our Volan fins a pinnacle of the highest performance flex characteristics.
