Compsands & Top 44

General Discussion
21
Quote:

There are more than a few issues regarding Top 44 surfers embracing compsand surfboards. Availability and performance are two primary issues. WCT surfers are very familiar with their equipment. The design demands on their boards is very specific. They may go through a dozen nearly identical boards to find one “keeper” and one “primary backup” for any one of the variety of conditions they find on tour. How many compsand manufacturers with elite shaping skills do we know that would provide Mick Fanning, Joel Parkinson, or Timmy Reyes with a dozen versions of the same shape 10 times per year to test and prepare for events ? Not too many. WCT surfers and their shapers have been doing this all year long, every year, for decades. Imagine the accumulated data. Then compare the data accumulated regarding shapes, flex, memory, etc of compsands. It’s going to take a lot of time, money, resources, and energy to bring compsands to the specific level of performance that the WCT surfers require.

Kind regards,

Steve Coletta

from my limited experience and what ive seen wrt compsand construction you can easily create a repeatable shape and your only variations will be materials, look at some of pauls boards he seems to have no trouble repeating certain shapes not to mention some of the other guys(and thats not even mentioning bert and the guys at sunova).I believe if a

pro wanted a board off say paul, given a time frame of say 6 months of trials he could make something that the guy would be at least happy with if not completely blowin away with, in regards to the boards performance.My question would be would said surfer be allowed to ride given board due to the team he rides for?i have actually no idea how the pro circuit works and maybe someone can set me straight, but id imagine that they are locked into contracts with this type of thing and dont get to specifically just ride anything they like.

Can anyone confirm/deny this?as like i said before i have no real idea and I am just guessing.

But anyway slowly trying to get to my point, is it really a

specific peformance thing that governs what these guys are riding?or a combination of performance and product/label placement?.After all to a certain degree are these guys not advertising and sales driving machines???.

So you get a group of new guys making a new type of product,

tell me unless they are afilliated to the big boys why would

the big boys let there guys advertise someone elses product regardless of performance?And when you look at it from a buisness perspective does that not make sense?And dont get me wrong im not saying this is necessarily a bad thing because at the end of the day big buisness has provided each and everyone of us with alot of advancements in our lives that we probably could not do with out.I do think it is a bit of a catch twenty two however which can hamper progression to a degree as well.After all you need to be certain of a market for something before you invest money into it.

regards

james

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Hi Paul -

I thought it was all because someone got lazy on Swaylocks and instead of having to write (or say) “Com-pos-ite Sand-wich” they just abbreviated it to “Compsand.”

As demonstrated here and Compsand.com, there are certainly a number of ways to skin the cat using basically 25 year old sailboard com-pos-ite sand-wich technology. Heck, Bob Simmons was doing plywood sandwiched over EPS with balsa rails much earlier than that.

It’s all good.

23

oops wildy said it first

ah really mate iv been promoting it as a label for the boys and myself

the more we post the more it catches on

dont own the word but ill defend my stance on it

if people that dont post here or there and use it in marketing for a company like surftech

well just make it “the original and the best www.compsand.com” :wink:

hunty id rather sponser a kid or a local charger

or a QS surfer

that way when they get the board the sudden leap in performance will score them a place on the tour

:slight_smile:

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Drat, Silly, here I was thinking “Poodlespanker” was the registered trademark !

LOL!!

The old windsurfers had a variety of tech names ranging from Ultra and Mega Sandwich, Carbon Fusion, ECS, ACS, TCS you name it… In the end most of it was fiber painted black…

I love how in the ski industry everyone is under the spell of “titanal” as a magical metallic ingredient… and they have all lost sight of a true advancement possibility, the advent of basalt fiberglass…

oops that cat’s out of the bag…

25

I have seen photos of CJ and Damien Hobgood both on coils(congrats mike) not that they ride them in competition. Other than the strength I did not really hear their opinions on coils. Ben Bourgoise rode a Fire Wire at the gold coast pro this year. Last year a number of people rode the carbon railed boards in Brazil and France.

I can also recall last year Josh Kerr being reportedly riding a second generation surftech (flexlite tech?)

26

Some quick points before I go…

Compsands are harder to make and more difficult to tune accurately board to board. Thus is heavily dependent on iteration, which is costly.

Access to customized compsands is limited.

If there is a tech adv, a pro is not going to tell the world unless he is being paid to tell.

Its real easy to make cheap hi perf pupes that last one or two contests, and because there are fewer variables, repeatabilty is also easier.

Maybe someday there will be someone talented enough to win contests on their own home made compsands. This scenario makes the most sense to me…but Im a biased gearhead.

27

ditto on the surfer-shaper being the one to really validate the tech. Sadly(but fortunatly for the pro’s) pro surfing will actually pay the bills and pro surfers don’t have to turn to shaping to be able to support themselves.

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alot of qs guys fund there own tours

they may have board sponsorship and a few grand but a lot of them save up for there first tour

i was reading this post on another forum about this guy on the qs talking about board sponsorship

and i said something like

if thats all your getting why not create your own label

get the boards from china and promote yourself

and phuck the sponsor

that way if your confident enough to make bets on yourself as a winner

why bet for someone elses money

bet your own

that way you gunna win more but you got nothing to loose

my offer to a QS surfer if your reading here

we promotes you as the label on my boards with your clothing label

we get the money from local industry and smalll business and possible government grants and some hard work

and completely exclude the surf industry

compsands last a long time and keep there pop for at least a year or two

your not dinging them cuz your only surfing with four other guys

so 4 or 5 boards would be plenty to get ya started

theres no reason why a qs guy couldnt ride the one board all year with a couple of backups

and if you get a damaged board there is a network of guys already in place to do repairs for you

if you perform well in your first year and the sonsors start making offers

we say nup dont need boards or cloths

its money or nothing

my grom is surfing in the national scholastics this month after winning 2 hawkes bay comps

he should do well

im sure he will pic up a sposnsor over there in taranaki

but we are going for money

not crappy cloths and boards

money to get him to the worlds scholastics(assuming he wins or places high)

and if the surf industry doesnt want to fork it over

well get it locally from sporting bodies

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Great. But who’s paying the contest judges salary?

30

oops

oh yeah

i give up

31

hehe

Its the ‘Circle of Death’ death dude.

Like trying to take mafia business.

32

Tim Reyes is riding TL2 in some events.

33

The top 44 guys go through boards like HumVees go through gas. Al Merrick told me Kelly gets 85 boards from CI each year. That’s a board every four days.

Also… these guys are very sensitive to their equipment. They’ve spent their careers tuning their equipment to the nth degree. They don’t embrace change, because change means they may have to adjust to something new. Adjusting means they may lose their competitive edge.

Unlike most of us - where we just need boards that feel good, they need weapons to do battle. The WCT doesn’t encourage experimentation like the early days of competitive surfing. They don’t give points for “feel” or “soul”. It’s how many hacks to the beach. If you look in the garage of most of the top 44, you’ll see a wall of boards - maybe hundreds - all between 5’10" and 6’6", and all almost identical in shape and weight. Some of the more versatile will have the requisite quiver of guns. If they’ve got longboards they’re for their girlfriends or grandmothers.

PU/PE and now EPS/Epoxy allows shapers to get new boards to their riders the next day. How many of you compsand (compression sandwich technology) guys can afford to give away massive amounts of boards to multiple team riders? Can you make a board in one day?

The majority of surfers don’t need anything like what the WCT guys are riding. I don’t.

34

the labour is a day

but turnaround times are a week minimum if you got an oven

blank construction is pretty quick if you exclude the bag times when your waiting

and glassing is longer with epoxy

glassing and finishing is more then half the construct time

i tried using poly on one to speed things up

but the board was pretty stiff and it ended up in two pieces

the first and hopefully last board i build that snaps

it felt more like a popout epoxy

rather then the flexy ones ive been normaly building

the point being with the compsand

the pro wouldnt need more then say 15 boards for his tour

hed save money on transport cost

and gets to surf the same board the whole year

theres got to be a competetive advantage in that

35

http://www.jackenglish.com/#a=0&at=0&mi=2&pt=1&pi=10000&s=19&p=1

look what kelley has under his arm. notice the competition jersey.

36

Looks remarkably like a Firewire to me.

37

I’m expecting Burton/CI and Kelly to roll out some fancy tech any day now.

38

CI just came out with something called double helix. It looks like some kind of stringerless rail wrap.Checkout the website for more info.

39

What’s that famous line from the movie Jerry Maguire?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA

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Quote:

The top 44 guys go through boards like HumVees go through gas. Al Merrick told me Kelly gets 85 boards from CI each year. That’s a board every four days.

Also… these guys are very sensitive to their equipment. They’ve spent their careers tuning their equipment to the nth degree. They don’t embrace change, because change means they may have to adjust to something new. Adjusting means they may lose their competitive edge.

Unlike most of us - where we just need boards that feel good, they need weapons to do battle. The WCT doesn’t encourage experimentation like the early days of competitive surfing. They don’t give points for “feel” or “soul”. It’s how many hacks to the beach. If you look in the garage of most of the top 44, you’ll see a wall of boards - maybe hundreds - all between 5’10" and 6’6", and all almost identical in shape and weight. Some of the more versatile will have the requisite quiver of guns. If they’ve got longboards they’re for their girlfriends or grandmothers.

PU/PE and now EPS/Epoxy allows shapers to get new boards to their riders the next day. How many of you compsand (compression sandwich technology) guys can afford to give away massive amounts of boards to multiple team riders? Can you make a board in one day?

The majority of surfers don’t need anything like what the WCT guys are riding. I don’t.

Great point Kendall and I will add that I don’t believe for one second all the stuff the pros claim about fine tuning their boards. More often, they win on something or find something that feels good under their feet and attempt to replicate that. Just like the average surfer. There is voodoo in the entire thing and 95% of is in the head of user. These guys rip on anything they ride and to me their talent and single minded nature is actually a hinderance to forward thinking not a help. It’s accepted by too many that the modern shortboard shape has evolved as far as it can and the next phase in only materials. I think thats false. I think it always has been.

This does not change with the pro in my opinion. Your right on the pros not experimenting anymore, but I don’t think it’s because of the way the boards ride…but rather…making sure to fit into a system built to promote certain equipment. The clothing companies and magazines are behind the entire thing and the entire thing is ( in my opinion) rigged from top to bottom. How does a subjective sport get an 8 time world title holder …supremely talented as he is…who happens to just be supported by the biggest and most aggressive clothing company ( with their hands in everything surfing) in the sport???

some part of it is a popularity contest. Not that they don’t have to choose someone who is actually on a day by day is one of the best of all time…only that the difference between some of these guys is small and all depends on who the judges or industry decide they want to support at that time. Some of it is just the atmosphere of the times and in my opinion another part of it is actually contrived. If you put all these guys in the exact same surfboards…do you think you would get the same results as we have seen the last eight years?

I think there was a time when the tour showed what was possible. Right now…I think the tour and how large the industry is holds the entire sport back and puts the emphasis on fitting in rather than fun or common sense equipment.