No I haven’t been scared off at all, as someone said, just busy. Homeschooling my 7 year old and filming the 12 yr olds practice and soccer matches plus doing some odd boards and doing contracts on wave pools plus checking out female curves as a form of grounding. As for the personality conflicts these forums create, pretty funny!
back to the structure/shape thing. I take the best points in defense of structure made by Bert ad KK, as very true. This is to do with the shape not even being possible if not for structure, and is totally valid. An exciting area to explore, but limited by the need for volume irrespective of density.(ie when going lighter than now not heavier) eg make a board that weighs a tenth of the standard board, and even though it weighs next to nothing, it doesn’t mean you can make it a tenth of the volume and have it float the same. The water which is displaced is key. My issue is with the tension and ‘fighting’ which goes on with light cores and super strong shells. It’s nice to ‘feel’ the water, as it goes under your board, and this feedback is least amplified by PU and and poly. I can’t stand some aspects of PU so don’t think I’m for it at all, or that I secretively have shares in some PU factory. It moves while you shape it and continues to move after shaping, and has density variations within each blank which limit perfect finishing.[here’s a quick story to highlight the degree to which it can move: 20 years ago I bought a 7" thick ski blank and started shaping my second finless board with 5" concave. As I shaped away on the nose rocker it seemed that the rocker wasn’t increasing as I kept cutting. (it was stringerless)…the more I cut the more confused I got…what the f*#& is going on here! Then I realised what was happening, had a laugh and put it on the roof of my bay. The nose rocker was bending back the opposite way, the more I was cutting from the bottom. Two months later I checked the thing and was even more confused, until I realised that I was looking at the board upside down. Not only had the 8" of nose rocker dissapeared, but 12" of reverse rocker had been created!..yes in the opposite direction! 20" total deviation]…
That radical distortion made me slump when I realised how the subtle stuff we design and shape is negated a bit due to this effect. However, if the curve change due to this effect is nice and even, which it is, then this effect wont ruin a board at all, it will just give you no control at reproducing.
The main thing I am excited about with new structures is solely to do with identical reproduction of the master. The more you start mucking around with rails and millimeters of sandwich foam, the more finish shaping will have to be done by someone who is not the master designer. PU/Poly or EPS/epoxy or even PU/epoxy are only adding a tiny skin of resin and fibre. Sorry this could go on further…
I want a perfect shape to be reproduced perfectly. If one if ten boards for a pro are considered great, and one or two in a lifetime considered magic, and of these magic boards, many people of different size and style all agree they are magic, then shape is still not understood. For these pro boards to be so close yet to ride differently enough for them to reject them, then these tiny shape changes from one board to the next (of boards meant to be the same) hint at shape being so critical it’s ridiculous, whatever the structure…back at this point again!