This is a bit of info for those interested in the history and down to detail information on board design.

Kitesurfing came to Western Australia in the late 1990s. The early designs didn’t have a lot in common with what is used these days. Cory Roessler developed a concept in the USA using skis and a wing, which is more of a ridged frame in a triangular shape, whereas 90% of all modern kites are of the inflatable type now. Progress was fast with several companies pushing new models to the limits, an example would be high aspect kites with an aspect ratio of up to ten, meaning length to width was 1-10.

Kiteboards, shape-wise have not changed so dramatically to the untrained eye. Early kitesurfers used what was already available at the time, which was surfboards and wakeboards. In the early stages of the sport, the thrill was to gain as much height off the water as possible, so hard landings from great height soon brought out the limitations of conventional surfboards. Board builders started to heavily reinforce the boards with fibreglass and flattening out the bottom to increase board speed.

Which leads us to the main problem with using wakeboards, these are designed to be towed behind a boat, the bottom has a huge curvature called rocker, which makes the board slow when used as a kiteboard, and therefore take-off speed for big air jumps was limited.

The first kiteboard manufacturers were usually local surfboard shapers, not actually involved in the sport directly, taking their acquired knowledge from regular surfboards, combining it with the input from the kitesurfers to shape kiteboards. These boards were very similar to surfboards in shape, directional, which means with a nose and a tail to be ridden in one direction. They were narrower and the bottom flatter than regular surfboards, also reinforced to withstand the impact from hard landings. Straps were added, to have a secure connection to the flying board and the fin set-up was also aligned to a faster setting, meaning the usual thruster set-up, where the three fins point to the nose of the board, were changed to parallel fins.

Wakeboards, although being slow, were used by a few guys coming into the sport from wakeboarding, they wanted to do the same tricks learned behind a boat, on a kite. The main hindrance was the amount of power required the get a wakeboard to plane with a kite, this is not a problem behind a boat, as you have unlimited pull and the boat speed determine the rider’s speed.

The answer was to flatten out the board shape, reducing channels and weight, all factors governing speed and maneuverability in kitesurfing.

The so-called twin tips, relating the fact that the boards are ridden in both directions and therefore have twin tips were made with wakeboards in mind, but lighter, and faster.

Initial construction methods mirrored those of surfboards, it was possible to cut down a standard PU surfboard blank and shape a twin tip kiteboard out of this resulting core. The core was then fitted with inserts and laminated with standard surfboard fibreglass and polyester resin.

This construction method was around for a while, the boards were heavy in comparison to today. Due to the amount of breakage, reinforcement was increased to lower warranty claims. It also results in a very hard and stiff board, like a bone it has all the strength in the outer layers.

Around 2005, the first wood core boards appeared on the market, this was somewhat of a revolution in board design, although plywood experimental boards had been around for a while. The fact that snowboard factories had excess capacity due to a decline in their market, made it possible to produce wood core boards at a reasonable price.

Up to this point small companies and individual shapers were able to make competitive boards in a shed, with few tools and little sophisticated technology. Modern boards are manufactured with costly machinery.

Like snowboards, the pressing of all the layers that make up a kiteboard by a hydraulic press is at the heart of the procedure, 30-40 tons of pressure is applied to a lay up of top and bottom sheets, fibreglass and/or carbon fibre and epoxy resin around the wood core with its ABS plastic rails already molded on.

The core itself is machined by CNC cutting, giving it a 3D contour on top and concaves on the bottom, basically the board is designed on a computer and then shaped out of a wood core by a machine.

As part of this shaping, holes for inserts for foot straps, handles and fins are cut into the core.

Graphics in most cases are also designed on a PC and printed directly onto the inside of the top and bottom clear plastic sheets, which form the protective coating on the kiteboards.