Absolutely 
The date of expiry of the patent appears to be over 6 years ago (03-05-2002)!!!
I find your humility offensive.
That board is gonzo on multiple levels.
Own it.
Sorry afoaf, didn’t mean to offend you. I’m the shiznit and I know it, how’s that? 
What I really meant was, I adore the engineering challenge of doing this kind of project, and I derive endless satisfaction from pulling it off successfully… But I consider what I do to be “craft” and “engineering”, while I think many of the illustrious posters here are at the much loftier level of “art”. For example, no amount of planning or intellectual consideration will guarantee a mind-blowing resin swirl… It takes skill, talent and practice. The guys who can pull that off consistently are artists, pure and simple.
VERY NICE! I would have said that about the board before you chopped it in half and made it reattachable. After the time spent on building the regular board, how long does the conversion to 2 part board take? Are you going to make different nose/tail sections so it can act as a “convertible”?
Your work has always impressed me a lot. I like what you say about the engineering and art aspects. I am merely an engineer trying to apply my education to my passion of surfing. Im hoping that through practice this will eventually translate into a balance of (some level of) art and engineering.
Keep it up and keep posting. I have food for thought for the next few days now thanks to this post. Thanks Schwuz
You’re the Man !
Herb
Now ,Supercharge that board and it will really go !
Herb
you betta recognize!
As usual, your craftsmanship sets a benchmark for anyone venturing into compsand territory. Mind blowing work. Why do you still have a day job??? One of these days I will pick your brain for your carbon rail techniques…
Ha, that’s an easy one man. If I charged for the actual time I put into my boards nobody would ever be able to afford them! Plus then it would be too much like actual work.
I am having an idea though, maybe you guys could help with the brainstorming… I was wondering what might be the demand for a do-it-yourself kit for making a board two-peice like this.
The real challenge is installing the tubes and then mounting the facing plates around them. My next board will be a standard poly without the carbon tubes, and just a couple of pins for maintaining alignment, like the setup that PierreB did which inspired me intitially. If I can make a system that places the stresses entirely on the clamps and facing surfaces and doesn’t require the complexity of the carbon tubes, I’ll probably whip up a Gingery-style home injection-molder and make some kits for folks to try out.
shwuz, That is a insane board, you are the master of new toys. Would love to add that to our website and I would like to add your board to my blog also. Great job my friend, I am honored to be part of such a master piece. Mahalo,larry
Wow, Larry is accusing ME of mastery of something… That’s a bit of a mind-blower. No way man, the honor is ALL mine.
You are more than welcome to use the photos any way you like. Again, I’d be beyond honored. If you do, please link to www.spindriftsurfboards.com as well, Jeff definitely deserves some credit for the killer shape.
Speaking of which, even though he hasn’t chimed in here due to his endless modesty, the contribution that “joyride” from spindrift made to this project can’t be overstated. Without his shaping skills, this project ran the risk of being pretty and over-engineered… and possibly not much more. In the end it’s just a tool upon which to ride waves, and if it doesn’t do that well then it isn’t worth the foam its shaped from. I owe much credit to my best bro for the shape on this one, for doing what he does best and leaving me free to focus on the stuff that I like to do.
consider some sort of awesome marriage between Spindrift’s distribution of the SOMA bags and Greyhound or Amtrak.
UPS ground airbag to customer, customer ships board via Greyhound/Amtrak, you retrofit board and ship back with prepaid label for SOMA bag or for a small additional charge, keep the SOMA bag once your board comes back.
even for a hacker, the retrofit looks frightening, but as someone about to go on a trip, I would definitely consider sending you a board to trick out so I don’t have to pay for stupid board shipping"…it’s just a box, ma’am".
keep the price well below current airline board handling fees and it’s a weekend money maker.
taken a step further, you could even offer the option to build them a custom tail/nose for a swap out piece…think fat fish tail for small days…once you have the board in hand you could conceivably cook up a custom half to match the existing dims.
Hello shwuz,
This is a very very nicely built two parts board ! My own two parts board effectively had no tubes and as you said the reasonning was to place the stresses entirely on the clamps and facing surfaces. The problem I faced is that the amount of stress was a lot more than what I thought and that it concentrated itself on the weakest point of your system (in my case the brass nuts) until it broke. If you reinforce that part, then the next weakest point will break … Now I understand why Pope uses tubes.
Therefore, I retrofitted the board with one big carbon tube for each junction. I had to build the tubes myself. The tubes have the largest diameter possible for the following reasons :
-
a diameter twice bigger gives you 8 times more strength
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very little foam is left between the board skin and the tube sleeves so that the tension won’t compress that foam.
Regarding Pope and the patent issues : it’s very time consumming to build a two parts board, getting a perfect alignment is not an easy task and we still have a lot to learn regarding strength and durability. The true strength and value of Pope boards is the fact that he’s been finetuning his system ever since the 60s and that he now not only masters the product but also its production process at a commecial level. None of this knowledge is available in the patent texts : as far as I’m concerned, I feel like I’m 40 years behind.
Hi again Schwuz,
I think I mentioned somewhere else…there’s another application for a splittable board besides airline cost-saving.
Adventure-sport surf-spot hunting! Abseil down a cliff face to that inaccessible break with board in backpack…
The friend I had who developed a similar concept used a bodyboard bag and rode a motorcycle through South America.
And Hey, at least if it DOES snap, there’s really only one place it can!
Josh
It could also be usefull for urban people who need to store their board in their small appartement, carry it in the elevator and take the train to get to the beach.
If you’re surfing during lunch breaks and don’t want to live your board in your car, take it with you to your office and store it under your desk !
If you don’t mind leaving a board in your car, you can have a travel board stored in your car trunk on a permanent basis, so it’s always available if needed.
And probably many more uses …
I can only sigh in complete aw ot the thinking that was involved.
My hat is off to you Schwuz
And btw is that you on the picture?
Wouter
I’d be up for a kit, even with carbon tubes. Have wanted to make a two part board for years but its never gotten high enough on my to-do list to see the light of day…
I know this is a bit off topic but I’d be very interested in reading that thread and apparently the registering process does not work and the compsand.com contact form don’t work either. If any admin from compsand.com reads this post, could you please help me !
Ohh, I’ll pass that along to dougirwin, thanks pierre.
I was actually hoping you’d chip in on this, I know you’ve been down this road before. I’m glad that you mentioned about the issues you had with a no-tube construction so I didn’t have to make that same mistake. I’d really like to be able to find a source for slip-fit tubes in a large enough diameter to be able to use just one, but the biggest I can find is .75… Of course, by your math, if a tube twice the diameter is eight times the stiffness, then a single .750 tube should still be stronger than two .500 tubes.
I really searched quite a lot for large tubes too but couldn’t find any set of tubes so that the external diameter of one fits with the internal diameter of the other one. Aluminium might be easier to find. I thought about recycling an old extendable windsurf wishbone but ended up making my own tubes. Making your own tubes is cheap and in fact quite easy. The difficult part was to seal the the sleeves with proper alignment. The center and tail parts are perfect but I had a small misalignment on the nose part.
Regarding the stiffness formula, I read it somewhere but I can’t tell you much more about it.
“Making your own tubes is cheap and in fact quite easy.”
Ok, this is a perfect place to tell us exactly how you did it!