Hello,
Like all of you here, I’m a foil enthusiast, and I’d like to learn more about board shapes to understand them better! Why do they have beveled rails or not, kick tail or straight cut etc … the advantages, the disadvantages …
Do you have any videos, texts, or other sources where we could learn a little more about all this?
If not, let’s do it here
Yes! I have a few ideas of stuff that works but I am a total amateur board maker. Would love some links or other resources to learn more. I’m about to shape a wing board/prone DW shortboard and am trying to dial in the specs and shape.
The absolute best place is the search function of this group, incredible amount of knowledge available if you know how to search
Thanks for the recommendation - lost a couple hours today in that Facebook group. 
Learned a lot and pretty sure the route I’m gonna go. 
well… one of the most basic concepts to understand is that water sticks to curves and releases from hard edges. So that starts to explain the reason for all of the different curves, rails, edges, cuts, etc… The other thing is that efficiency through water an on water are different.
I like to build my own boards. I took some Uni classes in this stuff 'cuz I like it. I’ve worked in the industry, and have seen behind the scenes. Each shaper/designer basically has an idea in their head about how water flows; what they want to optimize the board to do, then mix their ideas to get it there. get up early? release in a certain way? touch down in a certain way? etc… optimize for 0-5knots lowspeed generating? or for 5-10knots for takeoff? flat water? steep waves? small waves? high-speed touchpoints?
It’s all compromising one thing for the other. but also it’s a whole bunch of people making slightly less mistakes until it comes together to a good board (ie. good for a certain purpose - which is to say, the right flavour of compromise.
And sometimes you just need to get something out for the next production model-year.
Take things with a whole shaker of salt. don’t assume that just because a board gets good reviews that it’s actually good.
so… it’s fun to learn about it. That Facebook group is great. Read reviews and try to look for pattern matching of feedback vs design attributes. Talk to shapers. Talk to people on the beach (but remember, people really WANT to like the board they just spent a lot of $$ on, so… bias). try a bunch of different things. and start feeling things.
it’s a fun process.