**Do you know what the business agreement was? I sure don’t. **
**Funny that when Midget called me from OZ and we talked for the better part of an hour, he didn’t have the tilt that you are taking. He merely wanted my take on things and I don’t have any stake in any foam supplier and don’t receive any freebie blanks for posting this stuff. The last foam I ever got ‘special treatment for’ was Ice Nine because they wanted me to use their foam and give them feedback. Some of it was really good, some had problems, so whatever benefit I got became a wash when they had quality challenges. Look at where Ice 9 is now?
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**Go back and LOOK at what I said about U.S. Blanks. . They are providing a gold standard of service as far as I’m concerned. Hurley is totally professional, personable and on it. I have been alerted on a Nor Cal run and they’ve had only a couple days lead time and I threw an order together AND STILL GOT THE FOAM anyway. That is super impressive. Especially considering they cut and glued up the order I placed.
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**I’ve heard good stuff from other friends shaping Millenium…which as far as I’m told, comes from Blair. In the past, people spoke well of Blair’s efforts. And you are right: producing quality foam is much harder than people may have first imagined in the wake of Clark’s closing.
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**The bottom line for me, is that YOU are entitled to use whatever foam you want because the buck stops with you. As far as making cheap shots about someone being a trust funder or not, I don’t know if that is a true statement or how you can substantiate that. Do you have access to their tax returns? **
**The guys you are claiming as trust funders… well, one had a modest house by the SB Polo Fields near the bottom of Toro Canyon Rd. where I first bought MIdget’s Surfblanks out of his garage some years ago. The other was a sales rep. that I bought products from as long as 30 years ago. I’ve never witnessed lavish lifestyles from either of them. No yachts, Ferrari’s or mansions, personally owned islands…
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**Somehow that just doesn’t sound like the trust funders that I have known and grown up with in Santa Barbaria, of which there are many… since we are on this subject, my parents were blue collar middle class and I grew up above SB on the Kinevan Ranch in a cabin that my parents originally rented for $75 per month.
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Let’s agree that there are some business differences that happened with Midget and their dealings. When MIdge asked me if I thought they could capture the majority of market share in the U.S. I gave him an honest answer, as I did here. I also said “Midget, IF they did have all the pieces fall together in perfect order, I wish they’d make gazillions and could just compensate you in a fair manner so it could become a ‘non-issue’…but that’s in a perfect world isn’t it?”
**He laughed over that. But he also understood that I favor win wins in my dealings and would hope the best for all concerned If you wan to be a fact checker, call or PM him thru Sway’s, and I seriously doubt that he will deny any of what i have stated here It’s a bummer for him to make inroads with his foam into the Unitd States as he has with other places, but for whatever reason, a wrench fell into the machinery and I have no knowledge as to who owns that wrench.
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Midget is a big boy and he knows that business is business, differences arise, contracts are written and signed to keep people honest or at least within guidelines or confines of a mutually agreed upon contract.
Unles you are omnipotent, or clairvoyant, I doubt you know any more about the details than me.
I put this thread up because it was talking about foam that I had opinions on. Those opinions are based on shaping thousands of boards over decades from different people making foam. Some good, some not so good.
If you want to make your own foam and sing its praises go for it. If you want to shape only EPS, that’s your decision. If you want to tell me to fuck off… that is your perogative. It doesn’t change my feelings of what I’ve experienced from the foam I have shaped or purchased from my suppliers.
**As far as anyone making statements about the foam coming out of Mexico (Baja del Sur to be exact), I don’t have a problem with that versus CHINA taking over the whole fucking world. As I recall, there were a lot of Aussies that flocked to China as well paid advisors thereby selling out anyone and everyone along the way. And the guys that love Harold Walker… probably the salt of the earth, as far as I was told, sold his formula to Asia as well. I figure the United States would be better off trying to develop better business relationships with Mexico and Canada than giving it all to Asia. As it stands, American gun dealers are making a fortune supplying the drug cartels south of the border. **
**There is also a LOT of ignorance concerning what is required of a modern day factory in Mexico. The idea that no restraints of manufacturing, employees having rights and fair wages is an antiquated notion. If you don’t believe me, look into what is involved in a business start up in Mexico. I spend a fair amount of time in Mexico and have friends with businesses that are Mexican and old stereotypes are a cheap shot at an entire culture. I know plenty of white flojos in my own home town.
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**Tim Stamps told me he did not like the Arctic, of which he gets a couple every once in awhile. He said the glue ups from the stringers produced little glue balls that created ‘skiffle tracks’ across the foam when he is fine sanding his boards out. In contrast, i had done more than a couple dozen previous to his statement without experiencing that at all. Go figure. Bottom line is his preference is toward “crispier outside foam” versus a hard yet resilient foam. Both “Surfblanks” and “Arctic” have harder resilient foam characteritics. The easiest to mow and quickly handshape with a regular planer blade is USB Blue. The foam that dents the easiest is the USB Blue.
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Everyone is entitled to shape what they like, whether it is polyurethane, EPS, extruded. balsa, redwood, coconut or whatever the hell…
All know is that in the past decade, I have tried a lot of different foam being claimed to be wonderful, or green, or consistently hard through the entire blank… some of it was pure shit. Some gassed, some had crooked stringers, some yellowed horribly, some sucked resin like a well paid ho.
**Shape what you like, and like what you shape.
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