Hi, I’ve been back and forward emailing ci about this board, and they are sure the light stress cracks are due to a heavy impact, most likely on a flight.
When I got off my flight, I checked the board and was plesently suprised it was still in brand-new condition, no sign of any damage. Only after I started surfing it did I notice anything, and after every surf there are more and more of these little cracks appearing.
Any ideas what could be causing this? I hightly doubt I’ll be getting any sort of replacement board…
Oh by the way, the board is a few months old, apart from these cracks it’s pretty much in new condition. The image looks kinda werid because I bumped up the contrast so the cracks could be seen easily.
There was an older thread with a CI board with similar damage. I looked it up and the pics of the board are not there now. It was a very lively thread with a lot of opinions. Here is the link: http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/defect-channel-islands-board
Yeah no way that’s due to a “massive impact” if there is no indentation in the area. Any idiot could tell you that an impact hard enough to do that to your hotcoat would leave some kind of indentation or there would be some origin point of greater cracking that then would spread outward in a concentric pattern. That, my friend, looks like the glasser set off the batch waaaaaay to hot on the hotcoat or sanding coat and it became brittle. I experienced that firsthand on my first board I ever made - nothing ever got that bad because it was a thick hotcoat but nonetheless mixing the batch too hot will greatly effect the flexibility of the resin and cause it to spiderweb. The good news is that these typically do not take on water - the bad news is they look like garbage on your board
Thanks for the replies. Dave, yeah I saw that thread but because the pic wasn’t there I couldn’t see if it was the same problem I have. Do you remember if it was more or less the same?
Shushka, thanks, this is the info I’m after.
To be honest, the board still goes great, but the resale value has basically halved because of this, and I have a board that looks like it has defects.
This is just a section of the CI warehouse, where a thousand boards are kept ready to go at all times.
Which means the glassers are working feverishly to keep up with the machined blanks which are coming off the machine shapers, going to the ‘scrubbers’ to get finished, then going to the glassers.
A friend of mine has a small surf shop. He stocks CI because of uninformed demand, Lost because he likes their boards and doing business with them, and a half dozen smaller custom names.
The glass jobs on the smaller names are very well done. The Lost boards done well. The CI boards have visible sanding streaks, often into the glass, and are noticeably brittle.
If you don’t want to work with a smaller, hand made brand (the wiser choice) , go with Lost, their standards are much higher.
If you insist on staying with CI, at least order a custom glass job, S cloth on the deck, cheap add, pulls the board off the production line and hopefully gives one of the under paid, over worked glassers a few more minutes to do it right…well, better anyway.
I would love to go for a smaller, hand made brand, only problem is here in New Zealand, I don’t really have a lot of faith in local shapers (not to say they aren’t good). Most of them cost more than a Merrick (if bought from the states), and I like the fact that I can try one of these boards before I buy it.
I know with burton, they have an amazing warranty on their snowboards, which some what makes up for their average quality. I wonder if ci have the same (being the same company and all).
This will be my last Merrick, i’ve learned my lesson.
You can contact Paul Cannon through this site. He will build you a quality surfboard at a good price. Paul is in New Zealand....or you can use the Merrick as a template and build your own.
X 2 on the too hot batch of resin, I have had it happen before. If I ever was going to get a Channel Islands I would get it from Moonlight Glassing and no other, period. New Zeland, yep Paul Cannon, he posts on this site, don’t know him face to face but I can asure you he is a very nice guy and knows how to build surfboards, send him a private message.
Graham Allen of super session also builds good boards, His kauri veneerd boards are very tough and look great. No stupid crazy cracks, pressure dents etc. And they cost almost the same as buying a ci board localy.
If its just in the hot coat maybe you could carfully sand it back and re hot coat it?
Just got a message back from ci offering me 30% off a new stick from Aus. So I could probably sell my board for around half of what I bought it for (if I’m lucky) then spend double that on a new board, which may or may not have the same problem… I guess I’m sorta glad they admitted there was a problem with the board, but not really stoked on the warranty. I guess surfboards are pretty fragile, and there are probably a lot of people who try and get new boards all the time.
Thanks for all that info, I’ll definitely be looking locally for my next buy. When I get a sec I’ll check out the guys you all reccomended. This is an awesome site, cheers.
Brittle production glass job + torsional flex from you surfing the board = cracks. This has happened on a couple boards of mine. I’m not really sure what you were expecting in terms of a “warranty”; surfboards dont really qualify in my opinion, especially lightly glassed PU thrusters…they are disposable items.
I think of the major labels. Rusty has the most consistant boards in shops overall. Diamond and Pacific are extremely consistant. So is the Lab for people who do CIs
Hey Scott, yeah I know where you’re coming from. Just a little frustrating when I buy my first ever rack board (after good reviews from friends with the same board), and it’s a faulty glass job. As for Warranty, if I went and tried a goon air and snapped it, I wouldn’t be complaining. But when I go out and do a few average turns, then see the board is cracking everywhere, I think a warranty should be a possibility (maybe after a reputable shop diagnosis). While I agree these sorts of boards are disposable items, a company should meet some kind of standard. Nice name of your board company by the way.
It was glassed by the company with the name 3423 degrees … (name is too long to write out).
If you look for another look for the LAB they do most of the team boards. Someone mentioned Moonlight, but I think they only do the higher end CI glassing, The singles the retros and crazy color work. Not a lot of the performance thrusters
From what I have heard CI is building their production boards in Mexico. Moonlight did a lot of the CI Boards when The company was owned By Al Merrick. They may still do some of the custom work.
I have also heard rumors that Burton wants to dump CI. CI has had a very long run as one of the biggest names in Surfboards. Other big names in Board building are also hurting GSI seems to have been taken over by their creditors. Bean counters don’t understand surfing the know numbers and the numbers are looking bad. Containers full of cookie cutter boards are sitting on docks. Wear-houses are packed.
The surf craze is slowing. The trendy crowd is moving on to new things. They found out surfing is hard. The Surfing core will once again start driving the demand for boards.
In the mean time a small shop tucked into a back ally has managed to survive the Asian board invasion. It was hard going for a few years. But now things are looking better. Pass by his shop and you will hear the the whirl of the sander and the whine of the planer. To some this is just more noise . To a Surfer it’s a sound that brings joy. The joy of hearing a Eagle on the wing. or the sound of a wave at sunrise cracking on favorite reef
CIs production boards are still made here in the US. Millennium ships a truck of blanks weekly to Santa Barbara from Gardena. Those go back out after shaping to about 10 local glassers. Haakonsen, The Lab, 33*23, Oceanworks, Moonlight, mystery and a couple others. They average about 250 a week. Split among the glass shops at about 25 each.
Now my question is this? How does CI keep any kind of quality control With that many shops doing the work? What the Op has is a factory defective product. Does it really matter if it is from a bad batch of resin, poor workmanship or a simple screw up?
CI has made a lot of money over the years. If they have a quality control problem they need to own up to it and do the right thing. replace the board. They may want to take it back to have it analyzed and find out what went wrong. If it is from say a bad batch of resin then The Resin manufacture should be taking responsibility. If a glass shop screwed up then it is on them and with CI shooting a but load of boards their way that shop had better make some changes.
