Shaped an Elova 6’5" blank - PU foam (MDI) from Argentina. Picked these up off E-Bay for fairly cheap. I was pleased with the foam quality, it tooled nicely, seemed harder than the Clark foam. There were a couple of minor holes/bubbles in the foam, but nothing I couldn’t work around. The stringer was like basswood but more yellow (no idea what it was - anybody know?)
At any rate, not a bad experience at all. Which is nice, since I have a couple more of them… these are fairly close tolerance shortboard-style blanks, I don’t know what else they make. I’ll post a picture or two later, don’t have the camera handy now.
Howzit Keith, The feedback I’m getting from local shapers is they like Midgets blanks the best and the ones with the red on them seem to be the best density through and through. Have you used the Clark blank yet? Aloha,Kokua
I’ll second that Keith, I’ve shaped a 6’5" and a 7’11" so far and am pretty happy with them. They lam good too and take color pretty well, maybe a bit grainy, but nice and bright. Cant wait to get some of the US Blanks!
I’m not as pleased as the rest of you with the Elova foam. The blanks I received all had problems. Most of the batch were twisted but the stringers were basically straight. There were three major problems: every other blank seemed to have air bubbles but only on the bottom, they had more glue on the surface of the blank than between the foam and the stringer-I had to re-glue the stringers on 4 boards, and finally there seemed to be some kind of formulation problem in two of the blanks-when they were laminated the foam mysteriously would collapse in some places leaving pressure ding like dents.
On the plus side I just finished shaping some Walker foam and it was so smooooth. Can’t wait to try Just Foam. Walker-yes Elova-no
I got hold of the teccel blank, and was amazed by the quality, you guys should give it a go http://www.surfteccell.com.br/ I got them here in europe via UWL. I am sure some got them in the US…
I too have been using teh Elova foam and have been very happy, but as with all blanks there have been problems. I have had a couple of not so straight stringers, tons of glue on the foam, and had a blank split from the stringer when I was pulling the stringer and screening. But these things will happen, the pluses are… They finish very, very white, not bad to shape and they dont soak resin like some other blanks Ive tried. I have been happy shaping them and the way the guys at Foam Florida have taken care of me when Ive had the odd problem. Everyone is going to have to make changes, so overall Im happy.
Hey reverb - seems to me that in development stages one of the main issues is quality control. Possibly I just got blanks from a good batch and you got ones from a bad batch? I don’t know, and I don’t really care one way or the other – just reporting what I found. I don’t doubt that other people may have different results. But, considering I got these blanks for $50 each I thought they were very reasonable and shaped fine. … if I find any blanks from Burford Teccel or Bennett I will be happy to try them too (especially if they cost $50)!
An update on the Elova foam from Argentina - I left the rail offcuts out in the sun just to see what would happen. They are now a nice cheerful yellow color. (I’ve always heard this to be the case with MDI-based foams, so not too surprising.) I don’t do many clear boards anyway, but just to be safe I will be painting these blanks, and/or doing pigmented lams…
…the first blanks the guys did about 3 years ago, had too much white pigment that if you put the blanks through the fluorescents lights, you dont see nuthin…
Hi guys, I´m taking this review back to life, it´s 5 years old and I would like to know the actual status of this blanks in the US, Hawaii or Europe?
Does anyone use them? Did they get better?
They´re produced in my country and there is a mith that they export the good ones and leave the crap for the internal consumers.
I´ve stopped using them a year ago just because a distributor of the competition moved around the corner and I started using EPS otherwise.
Years ago, 2 o 3 they introduced a new brand, with TDI formula a I think. Called “Oside”. The quality got better, they increase the sizes and shapes, and the boards came really white.
But, still got some blanks with bubbles and bad glued in the first quality ones.
2 years ago I spent the winter season in Maui and a local shaper told me the same thing, “pretty good foam, but 5 of 10 are okey”
Of what I know, Timmy Patterson has been designing some blanks for them, I don´t know if he still use them.