Tail pattern question

[Merman Storm]

Recently I have been wondering about a detail of typical tail patterns. I know that many tail makers ask for measurements at different points, along your body, and the distance of each point from the floor or ankle. Normally those distances are measured along your side. Just for fun I also measured the distance from my ankles to my waist at the front and rear, in all cases holding the tape against my body, to capture the actual distance taking into account my shape.

I found that the distance was 2 inches shorter in the front than the side measurement, and 3 inches longer in the rear. But tail makers do not seem to take this into account. The result is that tails seem to ride high in front, and low in the rear.

I would think that to account for this you would want to not cut the waist as a straight line, but curved. For the front half, cut it arced down, and cut it arced up in the rear. Also, as a curve is longer than a straight line, you would have to reduce the distance between the side seams making each tail skin half about an inch narrower at the waist.

Anyone else thought about this?

[Calisai]

My tail design is curved higher on the backside and lower at the front because I want to be able to sit at 90 degrees without displaying a butt crack. I also figure that a curved waistline would help reduce a wrinkled front when you sit up, as well.

[Merman Storm]

Good thinking. For me, it seems to be the bathing suit that gets exposed in the rear, which tends to interfere with looking like a mer. How much did you curve it? Also, if you look at my avatar, you can see a wrinkle I get even when not sitting.

[Gail]

Yes, the back should have more material, like pants. I think the way pants have seams at the front, back, and both sides would look worse in a printed fabric tail, so that is why tailmakers don't. Your tail in your pic looks like it fits very high, which is nice. For me, fabric tails stretch enough that my suit is hidden all around. When I made my silicone tail I had to extend the back until the scaled part of the tail came up to my chest when I was holding it up in front of me before it kept everything hidden that should be, when swimming.

[Calisai]

I’m estimating around 3 or 4 inches of height difference, based on my design sketch. I have my sketch, my mental image of my tail, and my materials on hand, but I don’t have a tail just yet, haha. I’m in the process of creating my monofin out of Lexan polycarbonate. I’m going to later experiment with vinyl scales. I may or may not use swimwear/performance fabric in my tail design, based on my success rate with the vinyl.

As for the wrinkle on your tail, I had no idea! I assumed it was a black stripe.

[Merman Storm]

Its a wrinkle. To some extent it is there due to my being overweight on top of the cut of the tail.
That height difference is close to what I measured on myself.
Polycarbonate: A good choice, but it is not unbreakable. I made a insert for a finfun out of polycarbonate, took it on a 2 week cruise to Hawaii, and had it break 10 minutes in to my first swim in the ship's pool. (I wanted a stiffer fin). You may want to consider polypropylene. It's the material that FinFun uses, a bit more crack resistant, and cheaper.

[MermanOliver]

[...] You may want to consider polypropylene. It's the material that FinFun uses, a bit more crack resistant, and cheaper.

Just be advised, polypropylene is a real pain to glue to. What I found to work is a kind of superglue with a special primer (Loctite 406 with the plastic primer 770), at least for attaching a rubber footpocket to a PP monofin blade. Polycarbonate works without a primer, as far as I can remember.



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[Merman Storm]

I attach the foot pockets with stainless steel nut plates and screws.

[Hopeful]

So glad I read this before completing my waist!
Also, I just used super glued on my polycarbonate monofin (thanks to mermaid Oliver’s suggestion) and it worked beautifully. For extra security, I drilled little holes around the foot pocket and threaded through a small, strong polyester rope

[Merman Storm]

Interesting that others have thought about this, or are planning to. To give it a name, I will call cutting a tail pattern in this manner an "Angled waist". The reasoning being that if you lay a tail skin down on its side, so the seam is in the center, the waist line would be at an angle, rather than straight across.

Now all we need to do is get the large commercial tail makers (like Fin Fun, Mertailor) on board, and we can all have better fitting tails.

Note that any tail made following a tape dummy will tend to automatically get an angled waist.

[Hopeful]

Oh that is so smart! I’ve been trying to get the back of my tail to hug me and couldn’t figure it out, thank you for your wisdoms!