Being a ghettorat, you really do meet some interesting characters in your travels, and Corran is one of those. What I like about him is he is fearless, and certainly knows how to talk people out of money, ask Body Glove, and see what they have to say. Anyhow he’s kind of an anti-rat in that he really is a self-promoter, and since most of what goes on in the surfboard world is BS he fits in just fine. I wish him the best, but when it comes to the definition of unbelievable in the dictionary, the picture you see is his, photoshoped, of course.
your friend warns on not using natural fiber for which purpose?
some of the world’s toughest natural fibers come from the lowliest plants, some clarification would help - not to be used for lamination or as board core material ?
That’s the utter extent of hyperbole. “Super” this, Super that…
I don’t ever call any board unbreakable - its a fools notion. I’ve seen anything bust, let alone when huge waves crash on them right in the middle. And he demonstrates ding resistance with an open hand slap?
Foam going 90 deg without breaking? C’mon show me.
EPS is not ideal, but the stuff he soaks up a gallon of water with looks like Dacron pillow stuffing to me.
I say invite him here to enlighten us all - some of us are not hardened to the snake oil…
Extruded poly-styrene is extremely brittle. Take a foam cut-out from an outline and bend it. No way it makes it to 90 degrees. Maybe 45 degrees. Snap!
**SVF, XTR, XPS **its all the same. Very stiff. Sure it does not soak water. Resin neither. Surface bond only. Tons of gas. It had more flex back when the cell structure was vertical not horizontal.
If you can make it work for your program, good for you. I built boards from this stuff 25 years ago. Hard to shape, delams like crazy. Boards made from this stuff just come back to haunt you.That is why some folks using it leaves open holes in the board. Gas has to get out somehow.
I’ll stick to PU. EPS drinks water like a sponge.
Just ask my ding guy. He makes his living fixing that stuff. After they drain for a couple weeks.
Didn’t that video just remind you of a carnival snake-oil salesman?
Gather round folks,come on down. I have the most aaaaaaaaaamazing product. It will cure cancer, kill the common cold, and wash your windows squeaky clean! And it can be yours for the price of…HAHA!
Oh yeah, I build boards from this stuff. But I’m not claiming ECO.
Barry and Josh…classic lol comments. You MAKE Swaylocks!!!
Im NOT an experienced board builder by any stretch of the imagination, but I have been designing aircraft, hovercraft, submarine, rail and naval composite structures for 17 years and deffo smell the sweet aroma of marketing BS.
I saw this vid a few years ago when starting to use bamboo cloth… so a few truths from a backyardie hack who has used a version of bamboo fabric instead of fibreglass for the last 3 years… instead of the snake oil merchant…
Bamboo is quite good if you get the right stuff… no lycra it stretches anyway about 15-20% … havent found a knit thats better than a woven… better if the woven is 100% bamboo (though would love to find a cyrex/bamboo woven to try…)
Need the right resins or it will crack in impact areas, needs about to be soaked in resin and then rip the resin out once soaked if you do this it can be quite light.
At the start its hard learn to laminate with the stretching (I never use tape to hold in place, found it easier to do one side of the stringer along the whole board out to the rails and then do the other side of the stringer) use tension as you are dragging out the excess resin) then do but after a board or 2 I found it easier than fiberglass (But I was a shit glasser with fiberglass anyway…) the reason I wont go back to fiberglass is i sand my boards in my backyard… lot less issues with the neghbours…
Done some flex testing on some some 3mm thick flat panels of xps foam with sglass, eglass and bamboo woven then bend the flat panels round to find out which skin one snapped first. They all held in quite well being flexy but when they snapped bamboo snapped clean where eglass and sglass but had one or 2 fibers (but thats all…) holding the snapped pieces together… Hemp PET held in better than all of those it was harder to snap when flexing (but a bitch to sand…) so I use that as a layer underneath if i want extra strength in any impact areas.
Cores -foams after believing the “BS” in his vid I rung about 10 different Foam companies in Oz looking for this “amazing foam”?? Guess what… they either laughed at me or when i pushed the point saying that this guy has got it from somewhere, they said “yep, from photoshop”
Finally one company said they supply a foam from BASF that has silicon fused EPS… asked to see a sample …still waiting 2 years later…
Good luck to him… the vid was 2008… never seen a board of his in the water in OZ… so he didnt take over the market here!!
howdy wood ogre, that’s because we’re in different time zones ! hehe you’ll see that green button after my handle light up whenever i’m browsing new threads, the only difference is i’m not posting as frequently as before.
for now i’ve sworn off plant fiber as board core material as there aren’t nearby producers i can count on for standardized dimensions & quality. got 4 wood-strip HWS threads coming up, but i’m taking my time this time around hehe a local fella i found online is putting up a plant that’ll utilize ground-breaking japanese technology to turn bamboo poles into some sort of plyboo, a totally new approach that might help convince me to use the material for HWS purposes once their samples are locally available, check this out :