Do you remember those old channels filled with fibreglass on the bottom of those boards.
I 've found this shot of last Eddie’s Gathering.
Now they are on deck!
The fiber-rope filled channels in the past were called “power rods”, I believe. I know Blue Hawaii was doing them, as well as Rainbow (an EPS-Epoxy company from which I owned 2 magic boards)
The feature you mention are not the same thing… what you are seeing on the pink board are unfilled wells… Greg Loehr, Stretch, Cole, and a number of other shapers do those to increase strength and resist snappage. I believe they are called rail deck channels or something similar… GL may chime in here soon, as he can explain it better than I.
I’ve seen some of the Stretch boards with that feature. How would you shape those into a board? Mike
steve forstall uses those, too. i imagine you just tape 'em off, and dig 'em out.
with a 3/4" diameter - or whatever sized you want - piece of dowel rod wrapped in sand paper.
There’s a few threads in the archives about how you make these and also about their purpose. I believe they’re used for reinforcement. One post that I remember compared it to the packaging of chap stick where the package of cardboard was made stiffer by putting plastic perimeter “channels”.
Rio
Those are porbably just deck grooves not power rods like Blue Hawaii did
Deck grooves are making a big time come back in the country this year…
One step forward two steps back…
probably a good idea though never sure why it went away…
kind of like that strip of carbon tape they used to lay over the stringer in the 90’s.
Boards still break and people still die(aloha Malik) on the northshore
never ends…
i’ve got a board comin’ up in the not too distant future, and i was planning on giving the rail channel thing a try. it’ll be my first EPS shape…a 9’0" performance longboard. i was thinking about maybe reinforcing the channels with carbon fiber. do you think this would offer any significant resistance to breakage?
Howzit hackeysaky,I have a shaper who puts those in his shapes, but I question their functionality since it’s only filled with resin and no rope. In my mind they don’t really add strength,only extra weight. Aloha,Kokua
they add stiffness.
take a piece of flat steel…flex it; bend it.
then take the same piece of steel and extrude a channel in it; won’t flex easy anymore.
Same thing; you’ve taken a layer of glass and put a vertical section in it…just a minute amount would probably make a noticeable difference.
Actually, Mike, I’d be surprised if it’s not a much LIGHTER way to stiffen/strengthen a board vs. wider laps. Now…easier to shape/sand? No way…
Stretch calls’em “love handles”. Bet they’d be a great addition to my winter boards…nice place to grab on to when you’re wearing gloves and the water is sub 45F…