what makes it stronger than normal glass, is it the cloth or the resin or both. could I use all 6oz and epoxy resin to create a super strong board that is lighter than standard
i’m not the best person to answer this question but i’ll give it a shot. it really boils down to what you use as your core material as far as strength and lightness goes. several layers of 6 oz. on a light styro core will give you a strong light board. however, you also use more material (cloth and resin) than you would glassing a stronger, but heavier, core clark blank with a standard double 4 or 6-4 deck with patches. yes, it does dent up on the deck but they last long enough for most people. epoxy styro users, don’t get me wrong i’m all for using whatever floats your boat, at the moment, it’s clark foam for me… peace out…
Hey Mike, The answer to your question is an emphatic yes – you can create a board from Clark foam by laminating it with epoxy that will be lighter than a surftech and much stronger than a polyester laminated board. I speak for experience. My 8’3" Freeline in the archives here at Swaylocks is shaped from a Supergreen Clark blank and is wrapped with double 4oz. cloth. The board was done with Resin Reasearch Epoxy and has one hot coat on it and a sanded finish. It is lighter than a surfteck of equal volume. It’s very responsive (surfs like a board much shorter than it is) though light boards like this don’t hold their speed and thus require the surfer to drive them hard to stay with changing wave sections. The board is great in the critical part of the wave however. The panel bottom helps overcome it’s lightness making an otherwise very slippery board quite stable. It handles chop beautifully. Mahalo, Rich
Epoxy derives it’s strength from two factors. One, it is, itself, stronger and two you get a laminate with less resin. The fiber (glass,carbon, kevlar etc.) is the real strength in the laminate. The resin is just there to hold everything together. When the resin is very strong you can use less to hold the parts so you can get a lighter lamination. Therefore if you are using Clark Foam for instance, you can do the same laminate on the next weight foam (say you use a green instead of a blue) and net the same weight finished board. Now your finished board is significantly stronger because you have a stronger laminate AND a stronger foam inside. There are many other combinations epoxy can be used for and every foam can be used with epoxy. This makes for a much broader material base to work from so the variety of boards you can build is greater.