As far as alternatives go, veneers are a little stronger and use a lot less resin.
From my experience, for our use (skin over foam) at same weight sandwiched veneers are far stronger (durable) than plain fibers if you deal with water attack. Always at same weight Pvc foam sandwich are ultra stiff but puncture fragile, you could find an happy medium with cork sandwich.
For greener build I would go the wood/cork sandwiched with eglass and ecoresin on recycled eps. That way you can build strong long life board at good weight and feel.
That’s it right there. Any shaper/builder can do it. But even guys like me who believe, won’t. At least not very often. It comes down to economics, costs etc. Most here on the West Coast USA are using traditional Poly/Poly or EPS/Epoxy with a hand layup. Some throw a few unique things into the layup like Carbon, Tapes, Nets etc. But still a hand layup with E or Warp fabric. Three or four equal quality Poly foams and three or four EPS Foams. Not much change or innovation there. Although all thre Poly Foam manufacturers have greatly continued to refine their products. EPS quality has not changed in my opinion. Even a new start up here in the Nortwest doesn’t look any different than established and existing EPS foams. Maybe not as good.
IMO a simple retail-grade epoxy-over-PU build is not too heavy to hinder most surfers in day-to-day conditions. They’re at their best when they’re properly post-cured. .They’re not ding magnets and even if you do get a ding it doesn’t become a life-altering event for the board. If a glasser wants to max out an epoxy glass job without incurring the weight penalty they can bump the glassing up to S-glass, although I think E-glass is still a better match for epoxy than it is for the PE resins.
I am not averse to doing a veneer but the main reason I’d do a veneer or a hemp fin patch is for the aesthetics and if it fits in with the board design. Which brings us right back to the point that the shape is still the thing.
For a “nice” weight, on board that “need” lightness to “work”, skin weight allow by PU blank is too low to build what I think is a durable board, a board that not ding “for nothing”. For that you need a beefier, heavier, skin and so start on lighter foam. Skin don’t need to be very stiff, that give a higher bending stiffness, good for ultimate buckling strengh (ie break in half strengh), but though, that give strengh against dents and dings.
I did a lot of research and development of natural fibers and composites from 2004-2012 and had a custom white flax fibreglass woven for us. Here’s a image of a 6’0" bat tail quad I built and surfed a bunch back in the day.
Flax and epoxy is pretty bullet proof - heavy and stiff though. Natural fibers absorb a lot of resins. Treating with a fabric softener creates somewhat of a hydrophobic barrier on the fibers and reduces resin consumption by about 10%…
Flax doesn’t sand well at all so I made paper stencils of Hawaiian Tiki Gods to cover the lap line.
Overall there’s a good reason we still use fiberglass for surfboards - it works well, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive.
The greenest board is still the one that is sufficiently well designed and built - and sufficiently well cared for - that it never needs to be replaced.
I can’t tell you how mad I used to get when my kids treated their boards poorly, not using board bags, not covering them up when they were laying out at the beach, throwing them into the back of a truck to let them bounce around loose. An Epoxy/PU board that’s even nominally taken care of can last indefinitely without breaking down.
Last sentence says it all. Wish I could convince more people of that combination. Gonna start doing more of them myself. I already do a board that has a dent free deck. Hard as a rock and that’s with Poly. What one needs to do is figure out the cosmetics that fit Epoxy best so as to please the crowd. Stretch has done pretty well at that by using Pastel colors sprayed on foam.
Stretch’s program is so impressive. His use of deck channels and his post cure program are top notch. Some of the hi-tech exotic builds might be equal in build quality but I can’t think of any production builders with build quality that actually exceeds. I might be wrong about that but if so I doubt it’s by much.
There are others that try, but Stretch is totally consistent in what he does. Because I sell Marko up here, I know that he is their #1 guy. They pay attention to him and what he thinks(input).
Most dings are made out of water by not taking care of board, when you have ever make, sand, one you take care LOL. A thicker lam is far stronger against dings, epoxy better here than poly. Board snap I more from waves shape. Place I make board for eat boards. One guy use to buy imported stretch boards, they don’t last so more than others. I make him thick micro sandwich skin with strong biax and omega carbon stiffners, not light but they survive.
double up
Hi guys
Been watching this thread with interest, as our products have been mentioned. We have a lot of companies using our flax and basalt hybrids. A lot of the comments here are right - best Eco board… One which lasts the longest!
But what if you can build a board with eco fibres and they do last last? This is why we have designed, built and tested every fabric and fibre we offer in our range. We have a R&D testing factory on our shop premisis and we test everything before we sell it. One of the favourites mentioned is Basalt flax hybrid - its a great cloth and weight of 3.7oz suits surfboards. wetted out weight is very similar to 4oz eglass - as with all these eco fabrics the better results are with Epoxy.
We have done tests with a big board company R&D dept and with Epoxy and basalt you can put more weight onto a basalt board than a normal fiberglass epoxy board this company has a board breakage machine set up. Each time we tested a basalt (and some of its hybrids) over a 4x4x4 board you could put on 50-150kg more pressure before it broke.
Flax we do a 3oz cloth so weight cloth is slightly more than a 4oz wetted out. Again in the test machine it handled ok… breakage was just under a 4x4x4 board (broke about 20-50kg less pressure than the 4x4x4) we were not looking at compression the company we worked with were looking at breakage for an eco series - they will be coming out with a range in a special hybrid we did for them later this year.
So these fabrics do have a place in surf - I know its not for everyone… same as the ole "poly vs epoxy"camp. I personally like the look of the eco boards - and performance can be the same to your usual 4x4x4. I usually ride basalt (and hybrids) boards and most of my boards are still surfable in performance after 5 years which my old 4x4x4 wouldnt do…
. it doubled up while posting?
Hey sanded, thanks for chiming in!
That’s great to hear your’e actually testing the materials, I think that’s a big missing step to have some apples to apples data on equivalent builds with various materials and layups.
Do you have any distributors in the US, or do you just do international shipping?
Been following you on Insta so I see a lot of the stuff you post. Always impressed by the build quality and willingness to experiment.
Here’s an interesting read in context of Flax gaining some traction in boatbuilding:
https://www.proboat.com/2022/05/greenboats-flax/
A relevant excerpt from that article:
“While not as lightweight and as stiff as carbon fiber, it (flax) takes less than 1% of the energy (measured in megajoules, MJ) to produce, and less than 9% of the energy required to manufacture glass fibers, according to a life cycle assessment (LCA) calculation done with the MarineShift 360 software (see below and sidebar). That LCA also ranks flax fibers and bio-based epoxy resin at the top of low-emission composite materials, close behind hemp, ahead of basalt fibers, and way ahead of glass fibers in polyester resin.”
I’m just trying to find some alternatives that are equivalent to a standard epoxy layup but less impactful on the environment.
Unless you walk to your surf spot the mode of transportation you use to go surf has a bigger impact on the carbon footprint of what you’re doing than the materials in your surfboard. The wetsuit or trunks you wear, the leash, all of it.
If you want to be a good world citizen then stop surfing. If you don’t want to do that then build your boards to last and only build enough boards to round out your quiver. Insofar as the hierarchy of needs go, function comes first and fashion comes last
That’s a pretty nihilistic view gdaddy.
I get the sentiment, and you are correct, but that’s not a pre-requisite to learning and experimenting.
If you can’t do it all, do nothing… gets us nowhere.
Appreciate your feedback though, your assessments have been right on.
This quote sums up my current mindset in regards to this topic:
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is more people that have come alive.”
- Howard Thurman
Suffice it to say that “greener” has been a topic of discussion here for many years and the outcome remains the same. Performance is a good reason to keep an eye on new materials but it’s like anything else, there is always a point of diminishing returns. If you’re using more resin or more sealers or more cups or more tape or more brushes to work with a fiber then that counts in its footprint. If you’re vacuum bagging to use a cloth then the consumables AND the additional equipment and energy it takes to use that process counts toward the footprint of that clotth. If you’re using acetone in conjunction with using a resin then the acetone contributes to the footprint of the resin. And so forth.
The sum consists of multiple factors, not just one or two.
Just as an example, I don’t buy or use fin boxes for the multifin installs, I make my fins and glass them on. That alone will offset whatever eco-savings you can get out of using a different cloth and the so-called eco-epoxy for your lamination. I make leash loops instead of using fin plugs. I’ll use alternate materials if it suits the aesthetic but I don’t indulge in the fiction that I’m saving the planet. I don’t live in a pup tent or grow my own food or forego the use of electronics in my lifestyle, all of which contribute a lot more to my footprint than what choice of cloths or resins or blanks I use to build a surfboard.
If your pusuit of green construction makes you feel better about it then by all means, you do you. After all, these board are in part an expression of our individuality. Or our tribal uniform, if you want to look at it that way. But the one thing I know is that the wave doesn’t care what our personal virtues are.
Thanks Lawless
Speak to Timmy from RevChem and also the guys at Fibreglass Florida, They can get stuff in… actually looking at launching our Keyline Epoxy over there also… so hopefully soon you guys will have access to that as well.
Cheers
Haha! Esoteric! Convenient to the inconvenient truth. Better to buy Chinese soft tops and let them do the polluting.