Aloha All!
I’m a new forum member totally humbled by the knowledge being shared here.
Glassed and shaped a few hundred boards for friends/family and personal use in the 80-90’s before leaving the islands for school. I’m now in the process of researching and dusting off (and updating) the old tooling to redo my personal ocean quiver to be more friendly to my aging body, new surroundings (Hawaii Island) and growing family.
Planning a few surboard and SUP builds the 1st quarter of 2015. I already have four EPS (1.5#) surfboard and four EPS (1.0#) SUP blanks in storage. And its looking like I have enough tooling and space to feasibly go the compsand route. However, I don’t have a vacuum bag setup yet and my experience and skill needs alot of work and updating.
I am at a point of finding a good local source for cork and bamboo veneer. I am sensitive to the pro builders wanting to keep proprietary sources/methods secret (and food on the table) and so I’m leaning towards using bamboo or some comparaive material. But if cork is available locally, it looks like the most ideal material to incorporate into a surfboard/SUP deck as far as cost/performance/weight is concerned.
Anyone willing to sell me some cork or bamboo?
Mahalo!
John