surfboards epoxy vs polyester

[surfingwithkites]

No, I think Ian rides Naish now. He was on a 7m Helix or Cult. I'd love to see how he would ride after a month on Torches and a month riding unhooked. Maybe he will give it a go.

[seastack1]

This thread rocks.

Thanks for all the info/ideas. I just want an all around shape that surfs and jumps well and lasts for more than 1/2 a season since it takes me that long to get one dialed in. Now I know what to look for. It gets a little annoying to plop down $800 for a board that rides well but doesn't last.

Cudos to all the board builders/shapers for sharing thoughts and info. This is the sort of thread that makes this forum worthwhile.

[Kevin Salter]

...... I've never been a huge fan of wide nosed kiteboards although I enjoy wide nose surfboards. I find nose width to be great for paddling power and for keeping drive through roundhouse cutbacks but for kiting I don't see the point. (no pun intended) Especially for chop I like more pulled in noses. As long as boards have drive and plane out quickly it's not needed.

...... good low wind planing, wide range of turning arcs, fast and loose and drivey work in anything type shapes. My boards are actually geared more for small waves and sloppy waves than for perfection and with the 6'0 and above boards more for light winds in the 12 to 25 mph range. The trick with the 6'0"s is perfectly blending outlines, fins positionings and rockers to get highly rockered boards that plane quickly, don't bounce, hold a line, and carve tight arcs. It's really challenging and much harder than surfboards..........
.

Hey for what its worth the surfboard I did all my R & D on was a fish type thruster that was designed for local surfing in summer junky waves. It was a kids surfboard , polyester 5ft 6" x 18 1/4", that I purchased SH from a local shop. See below it now has had extensive modifications and my wife rides it now.

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quad setup 002.jpg (18.59 KiB) Viewed 1190 times

This board originally had fcs G5 's on it and all I did at the start was add footstraps to it and took it out on a windy double overhead day, well it was intimidating, it bounced and porpused through the turns, would let go, and go side ways mid face and I couldn't ride it in those powerful waves. It felt like a windsurfer would with to much fin on a big day.

1/ So the first thing I did was cut down the rear fin and grind most of the foil of it, still as a thruster. This made a big improvement to tracking but the board still broke out at speed just when you didn't want it to, and lost too much drive.

2/ Next I purchased a thruster set of custom glass fins with cut aways see above side fins in pic, and rode as a thruster again. The board now held on in fast choppy waves, but was starting to bounce again and felt to stiff in the turns .

3/ So I left the side fins as is see pic, and put in some inserts foward to convert the board to a quad as it still is now see above. Well it felt like a different board, it just charged. I could now change my line at will, it tracked well in big choppy faces, it no longer bounced, and it had the right amount of drive I was wanting to get vertical of the bottom turns and right back up into the pocket.

The rear fins on the board above are foiled both sides but small enough that it is a bit like splitting the drive from a normal rear fin into two smaller fins and closing up the fin grouping by taking the rears forward.

This board rocks now and will rip in anything from junky onshores to powerful cross off conditions.

So what I found through all of this was the std thruster fin set up contributed far more to bounce etc than the board shape did on the above board. So when I made my own board pictured earlier in this thread I went fuller again in the nose, tail and rails and the board rocks, giving me the drive, power and control I want in anything from triple overhead side off down the line, to small on shores.

The current board I ride now pictured earlier in thread is the only board I can do full round house cutbacks on , cos in the top of the wave it has enough power and drive to cut back directly up wind in side shore down the line waves. The fuller nose and chunky rails are what give it the power in the top of the wave, and if this board had a thruster fin setup it would be a dog.

Just sharing the journey I took to get to what I ride now , and why I believe quads give alot more options in board shape, but I don't surf or ride strapless so I wasn't looking for a cross over board, I wanted a board that would let me ride powerfully in the same places I had winsurfed for years.


Cheers

[surfingwithkites]

That's a great board story. Every board is different and you can do endless tuning with fins. More people should be doing the experimenting you do and finding out how much boards can be changed "just" by changing tiny amounts of toe in or fin "cant". You found a fin set up that made the board work for you given that particular rocker and template etc. I have done the same sort of thing re-finning as thrusters and quads on literally hundreds of boards and what I have found is that it is hard to generalize just by number of fins. It doesn't always make a board better or less bouncy to ride as a quad, sometimes it does the opposite. I'll try to take a few photos of examples today after I kite a few hours.

[Kevin Salter]

Yes its all interesting and like you say you can't make any definate generalizations . It was interesting to here your design brief behind the airush converse, haven't ridden one of those at all.

Its going to be great when there are good production boards available that have been tested and proven so that we can all buy a proven design and get on with the riding part of it.

There is alot of work and time in doing what I've done and I only went down this path cos the SS srt,s and Naish kite waves at the time in 06 were not what I was wanting, they lacked range, didn't have enough bottom end or top end in terms of wind and wave size.

The last few years windsurfing I switched to starboard production boards after years of riding custom boards, and the starboards were great, and it ment you could try before buying, cos over the years I have had some custom wave boards that were absolute dogs.

[surfingwithkites]

Well, I didn't get any photos of boards taken but it was fun kiting. I rode the super light strapless board which ended up weighing 4lbs 12 oz.

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It was pretty cool riding such a light board. Not bouncy and pointed upwind really well for such a low volume board with 2 1/2"+ of tail rocker. Best of all, at the end of a two hour session in up and down winds and head high plus waves it had no heel dents at all. I thought it would start denting a little bit since there is no "sandwich" under the herex but not yet. Need to give it to a better more agressive pro rider to test.

The cool thing is that I can probably make fully jumpable versions in the under 6 lb realm.

Testing another tomorrow with 4wfs fin system in it that I'm really stoked on. Can't wait. Seven days of wind and waves forecast and new boards to test. Yee haw.

[stealth sampler]

I must weigh in that I got a 5'9" board from SWK with the construction he speaks of, and it is frickin' bomber. I have jumped the thing absoutely silly, and rode it hard in waves for nearly a year, and there are absolutely no heel dents or other signs of stress to speak of. I do some fiberglass work on the side, and I was pretty blown away with how many steps were taken to insure durability.
BTW- Got my other board back Pfeff...Wish I could make it out to N. Shore more than I have. You know d'at...Shred it up, and keep making sick boards...

[donkiter]

Hi,
I've made a few epoxy boards over the years and liked the idea of using closed cell polystyrene, but the couple of boards I made with this foam have been prone to delam, I've finished shaping them with 40 grit before glassing to provide keying in, but the foam is just so non absorbant it delams.
I've heard of others using this foam, with no adverse effects and I would like to do it myself, for the lack of water absorbtion after dings. Does anyone have the delam solution? otherwise I'll stick to EPS and keep making a board or 2 a year.
Cheers

[Kevin Salter]

Hi,
I've made a few epoxy boards over the years and liked the idea of using closed cell polystyrene, but the couple of boards I made with this foam have been prone to delam, I've finished shaping them with 40 grit before glassing to provide keying in, but the foam is just so non absorbant it delams.
I've heard of others using this foam, with no adverse effects and I would like to do it myself, for the lack of water absorbtion after dings. Does anyone have the delam solution? otherwise I'll stick to EPS and keep making a board or 2 a year.
Cheers

Yes..........40 grit isn't enough. Cross hatch on 45% with a wire brush the use a stiff glue powder mix on the blank, then lay on the cloth while the glue mix is wet and the use normal resin mix to finish wetting out the cloth so that everthing is all done in one step.

If you lay all the cloth out and roll it onto a bit of tube, it makes it easey to roll of onto the blank on top off the wet glue mix. Squeege the glue mix onto the blank well. The glue mix wont delaminate from the closed cell styrene, however the foam can still shear so make sure the cross hatching is deep enough to give a good key and use a small plastic squeege to spread out the glue mix smoothly so you don't end up with lumps under the cloth.

[suRff]

have not had a chance to read everything here... i will get to it. here's short discussion between pat o'connel en rob machado about how the demise off clark foam has affected board design. yeah,, they talk like stoners,, but they are at the top of the 'board riding' game and have booked more water time than most of us on this forum. might be interesting for some.. give it a little time to load.

http://www.surfline.com/video/video_pla ... m?id=12267" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;