mike dubs wrote:johnny,
read my post on page 1. Very light and strong, extremely ding resistant. 5'10 Roberts Ill ,pads, fins and all sub 3kg. Only marginally heavier than my BWS Mulcoy Pro which was ridiculously light but a lot stronger. used to repair it every couple of months, but after a 100+ my Hydroflex looks like new.
Mike
Cool thanks Mike under 3kg all in is awesome!.
I've been looking extensively on how to make boards stronger and lighter and have come down to the conclusion that you need to resist heel denting to maintain structural integrity of a board in buckling failures and delamination.
The 3d foam addresses the delamination, as for buckling, without heel dents the amount of load required to buckle the board stays high.
However most lightweight composties don't really have enough energy absorbtion characteristics in order to absorb the energy of a kiteboard landing without plastically deforming the underlying foam underneath...unless of course you just throw a lot of weight at them .
I've been chasing some light weight springy core material to allow differnt skin materials to deform a little and absorb more energy without deforming the underlying structure......Something like air is ideal......No weight.....non linear spring rate..... except it would tend to want to delaminate the skinz, which he's got under control with his "3d glassing technique" which anchors the the lamination over a higher area.
THIS IS A BRILLIANT DESIGN....
I've built some some pretty awesome boards over the last few years in the quest for board magic... and after a boat load of testing, ended up with something alarmingly similar to firewire's FST construction as the best I've done thus far
I like the hydroflex design concept so much I'm probably just going to buy one for my next board and see where they stand up compared to my super labour intensive projects.
Not sure how they stand up in real life (so far sounds good) but after 2 years of measuring and smashing test panels the concept of pumping the board is not gimmicky in my opinion.
As a way to change flex and ride characteristics for surfer it seems pretty gimmicky.... but to prevent denting and the weakening of the board as a result from ktieboarding the pumping concept is very solid and brilliantly executed.