I know, new guy, tell him to search. I tried, just everyone seems to have this or that foam and being new, well, even after searching for the past four days and reading more and more, I just can’t seem to figure out if I should buy a sheet or not. Any suggestions or advice would be cool. Stuff is reasonably cheap, so probably wouldn’t hurt to grab a sheet, just don’t wanna waste all the money on glassing if it won’t bond. Will be using epoxy…
Anyways, hit up my local home depot and found I had two options for foam in different thicknesses…
This R MAX R-MATTE Plus-3, which seems like the stuff I wanna get into. Has the foil on one side, comes in thicknesses from 1/2" to 2". I’ll be doing a skim board, so the 1" will work fine for me. I found a couple threads via a search through google, but it was for boat building, so not sure if it will work for me or not or if it’s even the same foam company. This foam is an off white color and the foil seemed to wanna peel off pretty easily. Here is some info on the foam itself: http://www.rmaxinc.com/wall-r-matte-plus3.asp
Stay away from the foil faced foam. It won’t work! It’s too soft and it falls apart. about a month back someone posted a board that was made with it. Deck split on the first go- out.
The pink stuff is extruded polystyrene. Some swear its great, most say it de-laminates really fast in any heat.
For the non conventional blank, eps is the call. Its the beer cooler stuff. Marko sells it as a blank. So does U S Blanks. many others.
I get mine not from a surfboard supplier, but instead from an architectural foam company called Foamation. Google Architectural foam. You’ll see a lot of companies that will make custom foam mouldings for construction.
Foamation, the company I use hot wires it perfectly for **FREE. **You just pay for the foam. No need to buy huge blocks. They give you the scraps which become your rocker table. I just got two 6’-8" blanks from them for $80.00! That was after tax, so it would be like paying $35.00 per blank. That was for two blanks, and two rocker tables. All they need is your rocker drawing.
For the rails, I just found www.Precisionboard.com from Coastal enterprises (800) 845-0745. They are similar to Warvel foam, but at about 2/3 the cost. Comes in 4 and 6 pound densities. Sheets up to 4’ x 8’ in about any thickness.
Sounds good. They did have the beer cooler stuff there, but figured it was the last thing I should be touching, just because it seems like it would shred in a second(shaping). Though I did read through one great process (project frog) and he didn’t seem to have too many problems.
Kind of a cool thing is www.fiberglasssupply.com is somewhat close to me(2 hour drive each way), so I could get stuff from them without having to pay shipping. Will be giving them a call on Monday to talk about a custom sized sheet since a skim board is about 55"x25", so buying a full 3/4" sheet is not economical, especially if I’m a failure, haha.
I do have some experience with pour foam though and am thinking of making a mold, pouring the foam and making my own blanks, just not sure I could get the quality of foam I might get from a blank/sheet. But enough 3lb foam to do a skimboard is only $21.
Sent off an email to a local guy and he has some dinged up/broken surf blanks that will be perfect for what I’m doing. Plus, each blank is worth 4-6 skim boards, so yeah, super stoked!
i think my brother and i may be the last reigning kings of the hardware store builds with 30-40 so far. Our Lowes and HD carries Insulfoam EPS planks in 1 inch up to 2 inch thicknesses and Lowes carries the blue dow planks in 2 inch. I guess different locations use different sources although I believe Insulfoam has factories in the NW.
there’s a dynamic relationship between the cores and the skins
for the cheap HD/Lowes EPS foam you’ll probably want to skin it with at least 1/8 inch or 3/16 inch wood skins at a minimum or glass layers that represent that level of thickness.
with the blue/pink XPS you don’t have to worry so much about beefing up the skin layer just leave the surface really rough like finishing at 60 grit before glassing. If you keep the surface fluffy you’ll get an adequate mechanical bind with the glass.
XPS shapes closer to regular Polyurethane surfbaord foam and has better reflection memory but significant snap effect when it reaches its breaking point.
for home builds the foam HD or lowes sells is fine.
but keep your eyes on the cost of your raw materials which are going up daily.
we used to get 1 and 2 inch eps plank under $20 a couple of years ago. Not any more.
infact i noticed that the price for EPS seems to be going up much more dramatically than the price for XPS whuch has always been around $40-$60 for a 2 inch plank here.
BTW a plank is 48" wide by 96" long enough to make a single bent in rocker blank at the approriate thickness.
i used the the 1" beer cooler stuff on the first board i’ve ever made. the board is only 1" at its thickest point. it was real easy to shape. worked better with a surform and sand paper than it did using a grinder-way more control! glassed it with epoxy resign,kevlar and 6oz. its bitchin and very fast! the blank cost me 4 bucks-the glass 175. dont be ascarred.