I suppose you may be right. Certainly from a Swaylocks viewpoint, anyway - there is apparently a whole cadre of possibly less erudite board buyers out there who think highly of these things.
I accepted the board in a trade, not with the intent of creating a silk purse, but with the goal of using this as a potential daily driver. The size was right, the shape was right, and, other than the wood veneer / Surftech aspect, it was just what I was looking for. It came with rave reviews, and like I say, I accepted the offer that was presented to me. I did not know it was never glassed.
Hopefully, with a new glass job, it’ll be battle ready, and perform for me as needed. With Corona Lockdowns and other changes in my life, I am gravitating to riding longboards pretty exclusively. I might keep an 8 footer or two, but I have a feeling 9’ and up is gonna be my new norm. I like the shape, like the rails, like the fact its a single fin without sidebites, I even like the fin it came with.
The “spoon” aspect is interesting. I personally don’t subscribe to the whole “swing weight” spiel, but to me it looks like a standard foil with a bump of foam under the chest, which works just fine for me.
I am not a Surftech fan, have never owned one before, I’m pretty sure I would never buy one new - but I’m not against taking this one in trade and making the best of it.
There is no “swing weight” to swing on that board. Although your layer of 4oz will make it heavier, I am sure that the little bit of extra weight will be a positive. Too light to begin with. Made at the Cobra Facttory in Thailand…
The fin had a lot of those shatter type cracks, so I started sanding, to see if I could sand them out. I have sanded all the way to the wood, and guess what - again, no glass. Yep, even the fin was finished with resin, no glass. There IS glass in the halo, but sanding all the way to the wood, I never hit any glass. My plan is to sand it down to raw wood, then glass a few layers each side, with epoxy resin, sanded finish to match the board.
I did repair on wood look boards from cobra, starboard windsurf seems to not have glass over but sandwich pvc in. Last surftech tufskin, with “cellulose sandwich core” are made with a thin, around 0,6 to 0,9 veenner, sandwiches between fiberglass and car paint over. Those boards have more flex, feel better on water (from riders) they are stronger to dings but they pressure dent and buckle easier than older pvc sandwich build. Except water intake problems, i find thin wood veenner sandwich build, aka timberflex well detailed to us by Greg Loehr here, well effective for surfboards.
From this angle the core looks like a single piece of wood. If so, it’s hard to imagine a 1/8th panel of wood can hold up without exterior reinforcement when used in that shape. I wonder if what we’re looking at is not a single piece, but if we’re actually looking at a veneer over ply or some other stiffer core?
What Cobra does for each customer like Surftech, BoardWorks and a bunch of Sailboard companies is "proprietary ". . The company submits their design and construction methods to Cobra. Cobra builds the boards to the customers specs that are often patented. Cobra signs an agreement to hold these design features and methods in the strictest of confidence. That is why most Sandwich type boards though they may be similar, no two companies build methods and materials are exactly alike. Most notable; Surftech and Boardworks. Similar construction techniques and materials, but not exactly the same. There are techniques and materials though that are know as “Public Knowedge” or Generic. Things like traditional methods; foam core And fiberglass skin etc. I’m assuming Cobra is still in operation. Haven’t checked in awhile. For a Mass Production setup; They had scruples when it came to confidentially. Another company who had scruples and did a similar service, was or is KKL in Carlsbad.
Gdaddy, the veneer appears to be a single sheet of wood from the stringer to the rail, about 1/16" or so thick, over fiberglass & some type of composite, about 3/32" total thickness over beer cooler foam. Then about 1/32" of shiny but brittle poly gloss coat. So yes about 1/8" total on the skin, no fiberglass on the outside of the wood. The finish shatters easily, like the screen on your cell phone.
The fin is a wood fin with a laminated fiberglass & resin halo. The halo appears to be standard fiberglass fin construction. But there is no fiberglass over the shaped fin, only poly gloss resin. I sanded down to raw wood to eliminate the ugly cracks in the finish, without ever hitting weave.
I used to get those fins out of Surftechs that were purchased for a surf school on Maui. The owner of the school replaced them with hard rubber fins made by Surfco. So there were always a bunch of those fins laying around. There is a method wherein fins can be cast in a resin tray. One of the guys up at the “Chicken Ranch” used to do boards for Greg Noll. He cast the fins in resin. Ground the glass bead(resin bead or halo) to fit the foil of the fin and then glassed the fin on. I believe those fins are made using the same method. The kicker is that there has to be some kind off tabs or pins to secure the “cast” fin to the base. Most likely a “five minute” Epoxy. My guess is that once the fin is cast, foil ground and glued/pinned to the base; it is the finish sanded and sprayed with A Polyurethane or Acrylic finish. Bahne, Rainbow, etc all stencil their logo and finish with a spray finish.
It’s all relative as they say. Depends on rider preference. A 9’ board can be anything from super lite like Huck’s Yater to a Volan glassed "old school board. Depends on what you like to ride. There is a wide range of preference.
The halo definitely has glass, you can see the weave. The “Yater” logo was printed on top, looks like it was silk screened, not even under resin - it was the first thing to go when I started sanding.
The whole thing is kind of a mystery to me. The board is beautiful, the shape is flawless, but without glass it’s really just a decorative wall hanger. I would be embarrassed to put my name on it. I’m actually surprised anyone buys these things, outside of interior decorators.
Hopefully glassing it will stop the constant shattering of the finish. Those shatter type cracks already there will remain, preserved under glass. I am sanding before glassing, but I’m not sanding off ALL the brittle poly gloss resin, down to raw wood. Except on the fin.
The ideal situation would be to take the unfinished board and glass it like a normal surfboard, with epoxy resin, INSTEAD of glass-less poly gloss. I have to wonder why the maker couldnt figure out something so obvious.
I’ve been surfing a 9’10 wood veneer Yater Surftech as a daily driver since Yater first put them out. I think sometime in the 90’s but long enough ago that I forgot. The board developed long nose to tail cracks in the bottom about two years in. I figured the combination of gloss coat and expansion of the board heating up on the rack were the cause. Another friend had the same thing happen to his board early on as well.
I ended up sanding it down and putting down a coat of epoxy on both sides. No glass was added and since then its just been regular wear and tear. I usually do an overall rehab on the board every 3 - 5 years ending up with a new coat of epoxy when done. Over time the board has acquired an interesting spring / flex to it that was not present when it was new. But based on my board I wouldn’t be concerned with adding extra glass just surf it as is.
Kmook, that sounds interesting, would love to see pics if you have them.
The guy I got this board from also has a 9’ 10" Yater Spoon Surftech, he loves it. He doesn’t surf anymore, hasn’t for about 5 years, but sez if he ever paddles back out it will be on the Yater Spoon. It has some ugly shatter type cracks also. Hard to say how many, cuz I haven’t had a real good look at it, and he has so much wax on it that you would have to clean it first to see clearly. Same as I had to do with this one.
It’s not that I’m real concerned about putting glass on, I’m just doing it cuz its something I do with every board I make. And although I didn’t make this one, every board I own has a layer of fiberglass on the outside, so now this one will too.
The board fell when I was cleaning the wax off it, and landed on the rail. What should have been a small ding the size of a quarter blew out a baseball sized chunk of the veneer - shattered like a china teacup. That’s when I realized A) there was no glass on it, and B) that I wanted glass.
I know I’m old school, but I feel like there’s a reason a layer of fiberglass and resin is the industry standard for surfboards.
I don’t see a layer of 4 oz. with epoxy resin having a big impact on the flex characteristics of the board, one way or another. At any rate, I’m not real concerned about that either.
While I’m shocked to find there is no glass on the outside of the board, I do like the board, and think I will have good times with this board.
I bet a layer of 4oz + epoxy will have an impact on flex… Many surfboards have only a 4oz skin on the bottom, not the stiffer, stronger one’s for sure, but whitout…
I’m not saying it wouldn’t have an impact, I just don’t think it will have a BIG impact (remember I am glassing over an existing composite skin of fiberglass and wood over more than 9 feet of stringerless EPS).
The difference, I suspect, will be incremental at best, and probably go virtually unnoticed by me, hence not a big enough factor to be a deterrent.
Take a look at the tapered stringer in a Yater Spoon. Mine is fake, veneer, but the original board had a real tapered wood stringer.
I’m betting a single layer of 4 oz glass is not going to affect flex more than the real wood stringer(s) did in the original.
As a nine footer I would think a layer 4oz would be a big improvement. And by the way; the other model that is similar is the Bonga Perkins model by Boardworks. Just minus the skin. Yater has been into Epoxy for years. When Clyde Beatty did the bulk of his glassing in Santa Barbara, I am pretty sure all of the Epoxy boards were done there. Epoxy glass jobs were done by a former Swaylocks contributor who went by the handle “fatty”. She had fatty’s fiberglass in Fort Bragg for a few years . Heard she’s in Alaska now. I don’t think many if any of those boards done by Yater back then(2000 or so) were EPS foam though. Used to see a lot of them at the Beach House in SB. If they were EPS/Epoxy they were clearly labled. The Surftech you have is pretty unique in its construction and there isn’t much out there to compare it to.
