If you want the stiffness of carbon, then it is a great product.
That’s why they use it in airplanes, they can get the same strength with less kevlar (and kevlar is cheaper than carbon) but they need the stiffness.
Your boards didn’t break, I won’t doubt that. And Kiteboards need stiffer fibres because they are so thin.
Carbon is strong but it’s breakage point is not much higher than that of glass. And everybody know that stiffer things are easier to break. (If you have a good impact, ex. knock a stick on your knees and try it with something more flexible with the same tensile strength) Surfboards break on impact ex. picking into the bottom, getting crushed by the lip, a hard landing after an air,…
If you use a carbon layer and a kevlar layer it will be stronger than 1 carbon layer. But you will not use the Kevlar fibres optimal, you pay for something you are not using! You can just add a few carbon fibres (not much) and it will heve the same strength.
(not the same breakage point but the same force where the carbon will fail, kevlar fails later)
And because wavesurfboards don’t need the stiffness of carbon I believe that just using glass will work fine and is way cheaper!
Yes I know its hollow, but the fibres will take the same force for bending the surfboard (foam does practically nothing). You only have to reinforce for impact, and I don’t believe in carbon for that!
1)Carbon and Kevlar in the same fiber direction is redundant, I agree, but at 90 deg. to each other they can compliment each other quite well… 2)Check the specific gravity (or weight) of woven carbon, woven Kevlar , and woven E-glass, Kevlar IS the lightest of these three materials, so your comment about a heavier board holds no weight…
Kiterider…
Yeah, that’s true! But that’s not what the guy wants to do ;).
And for kite- and sailboards I really see the advantage of using carbon.
But for surfboards I don’t, even when they are hollow.
With a heavier board I just meant that the extra layer wich has no use adds some weight (it’s heavier than not putting that layer on)
If he is putting the Kevlar on the inside it is useless and added weight for no reason, as an outer puncture resistant layer it’s acceptable, but really not necessary like you said…
I prefer the flex pattern of all glass boards now as I find carbon too stiff for my tastes, although in this hollow structure build it has some benefits over normal glass…
This guy has to increase the skin thickness of this type of board to support a riders weight, his hard foam composite becomes the only thing between fun and failure without a supporting rib structure…
The Carbon make more sense in this application simply because it’s stiffer and less likly to deform unger body weight and he can use less layers of it saving weight…
That being said, this guy must have shares in a carbon cloth manu-f company, pretty ballsy stuff to build unproven board construction tech. using expensive carbon…
I’ve always wanted to build a hollow board and I think I have come up with a way to do it correctly, all I can say, it’s nothing like this method here, although I like his “geodetic like” deck supporting structure, that’s cool…
