Hello, me and my biddies live about 2 hours from the beach but we love surfing and skimboarding we have made a couple of wooden skim boards and they work good and look good but they are realy heavy… We wont to start making foam ones but we cant find the blanks anywhere. Can someone please help us find some skimboard blanks?.. Jonathan
Skim boards can be made out of Dyvinycel foam. I think H 4.5 is probably the best density. Laminate it with epoxy and of course I’m going to tell you that should be Resin Research epoxy. Call 321-779-2369 for that. Sorry about the spam.
how can i get ahold of that foam i have searched everywhere and almost lost hope?
Most the guys are using H80 3/4". If you are in socal, try Diversified Materials in San Diego or Fiberglass Hawaii in Santa Barbra or Santa Cruz. Most of the bigger distributors only sell by the case, but these guys break cases down. Sluggo
diabgroup.com is the website. You may also want to look at Corecel which is off white in color. I think that Diab sells that as well.
There’s no such thing as skimboard blanks. Skimmers are made from 5 pcf PVC sheet foam – namely Divinycell H-80. Similar products are Klegecell and Airex/Herex. Corecell is big with the kiteboarders – it’s an SAN foam, and the only one I think. It seems to be tough and have a good shear strength. Haven’t used it but it’s got a good rep. Noah sells the stuff by the sheet. Fiberglass Supply sells H-80 by the sheet. www.fiberglasssupply.com www.noahsmarine.com Skimboards are vacuum bagged on a mold table to put the rocker in the foam, which is shaped flat. This is a HUGE startup cost as well as headache, especially if it’s all new to you (i.e. you could buy about 4 skimboards before you even have everything setup. But this isn’t about saving money, it’s about creation…) I suppose you could layup a skimmer using traditional hand-layup methods, but I imagine you’d have to be very skilled at hand layup. I suppose you’d layup the base and wrap the rails, then let it gel. Flip it onto a sheet of plastic, and layup the top just barely overlapping the base freelaps. Then put plastic sheet on the top and place a 2" block under the nose and some soft weight on the board to create the rocker. I’ve never done this, but imagine it’s possible. High performance skimboards are coming out at about 4.5 lb for a large.
Thank yall for the responses and help…