Hello All,
First-time poster and never before shaper. So forgive any ignorance. I’ll do my best to make this sense.
I saw another thread that I believe was similar to this, but it quickly divulged into war stories and “nothing is new / environmentally friendly.”
I’ve been fascinated by board design since I started surfing 3 years ago and have recently decided to start shaping boards.
Having watched the EAST, I’m very curious about flax construction. When done right, it appears you can get the strength of a vacuum-bagged epoxy board with ride characteristics that are more similar to that of a PU board.
New tech/fad conversations aside.
Does anyone have any real-world knowledge/wisdom they’d be willing to share? In my scouring of the internet I’ve found very little.
Going off what Gary McNeil described in the EAST:
EPS blank with a stringer or “heavy duty carbon rails”
"Glassed " with:
4 ounce flax and a 6 ounce fiber glass - top and bottom (I’m assuming)
Finally, I understand historically, swaylocks have been used to data mine shaping secrets for use by pop-out manufacturers such as Surftech. That’s not my intention here, but that’s probably what they all say.
In hunting, there is a cliche of “I’m new to hunting, looking for good spots to hunt. Please share GPS coordinates.” I hope what I’m asking isn’t the equivalent of that, so apologies if this comes off as one of those posts.
sanded on here sells flax cloth through his business, you could DM him to buy material and get insights.
Worth following them on Insta and going back through their posts, there’s a lot of flax and other alternative materials in there for inspiration:
Never used, it but have been getting alternative boards built for 20+ years.
Shapers/glassers are willing to build most anything if you pay them. Find a local shaper willing to do contract glassing and provide the materials. That’s the easiest/quickest way to vet a material you’re interested in trying. Build it and ride it for yourself.
Something else to look at if you’re interested in durability/performance/lightness is cork. Go follow this guy on Insta:
Been riding his boards for 15+ years. He’s doing carbon/cork/vacuum bagging
BTW, this post looks like it’s in Board Archive → Materials category. You’ll get a lot more views/feedback if you repost it in the General Discussion category.