I’ve got a couple of these blanks that have been sitting in my garage for years. No reason to shape this board now, other than I just needed a project to get me out of my depressive funk lately. I have a million other projects that make more sense logically, but that’s a story for another day.
I decided I needed to make me an 8’6” longboard, cuz that’s the size of the blank. Not sure what I’ll do with it when its done, I really don’t need any more boards!
These Ecotech blanks are kind of a mess - they have a super tough shell that is very hard to get off, and this one had a bunch of plastic type crap around the edges I literally had to chisel off. It also had no stringer, so there was that also.
The other unique or unusual thing about this blank is that it is very close tolerance. Like you could almost just clean it up a bit and glass it as is. So there isn’t much need for actual shaping, if you’re going for a classic longboard, which I am. So that’s the plus. The minus is that you have to be super careful even skimming the shell off, cuz there isn’t a whole lot of room for error, like there is with a normal slightly oversize blank.
I really wish I could have left the hard shell, at least on top, cuz that would make this bugger super strong. But the blank has a bit of twist I need to shape out, and I dripped a bunch of resin glueing up my stringers, so I really needed to plane down to shape-able foam. Too bad, cuz the shell on these things as they come off the truck is really bullet proof.
I’m almost wondering if this might have been an experimental popout type board. Cuz even tho there’s a little extra thickness in the nose & tail, there is zero extra thickness thru the middle.
If the last one has no twist to remove, im gonna check into maybe clean it up just a little then glass it & go. Would be super strong, even if the nose & tail are just a little clunky looking (like a softtop).
The first thing I did was mark some lines for the stringers. Then I cut the middle line carefully as I could with a hand saw (I don’t have a decent band saw for this).
I glassed each side of the halves along the cut edge, with pigmented resin and scraps of 4 oz. cloth, sanded, buttered both sides with some more pigmented resin, added a stringer from some pieces of 1/4" plywood I had laying around, and clamped the halves back together. I just clamped down on the blank, because the shell is so hard I could do that.
Then I did the same thing twice more, but no wood on the outer stringers, just 4 oz. glass scraps each side, sanded, buttered with colored resin, and clamped up.
Finally after a couple days tinkering around, I had an actual blank. Today I planed the hard shell off, and its ready to shape. But it doesn’t need a whole lot of “shaping”, its so close tolerance, all I have to do is maybe thin it out nose and tail, add some V in the tail, maybe a little concave in the nose, and fine tune the rails. The plan shape and deck dome is exactly the size and shape of the blank as I got it.
BTW I got this blank years ago (for an excellent price - I think I bought like 6 or 7 for about $30 each) from McDing, Swaylocks OG that I don’t think is around the new forum anymore, but sorely missed by some of us. Anyway, I got several, and built boards from most of them, just two left.
These blanks are very hard on the outside, but get softer toward the center. The foam is a little yellower than modern blanks, but overall pretty good quality.
Ecotech is a now defunct company that made surfboard blanks years ago. I couldn’t find anything on a google search, but probably one of the many failed startups in the wake of the clark foam fiasco. The quality seems to be ok tho, and like I said, McDing practically gave these to me (to get me started on shaping foam from my HWS days.)
