a friend of mine bought some safari foam and
shaped one board out of his large amount of foam
saw that it sucked in
i took a few of the blanks off his hands to see if they were bad or not
but i don’t wanna risk shaping and glassing a board and the next thing
you see is a fiber glass shell with a stringer
anyone ever have this problem and is there a way that you can fix the implosion
if it starts to happen?
The first batch of safari longboards had a big problem with the imploading foam when it is glassed.
The shortboards have a bunch of holes in the blank, but they don’t impload upon glassing.
search safari foam and i think there was some discussion about it
Howzit bigrick, Don't know about Safari foam but a friend had the same thing happen with a South Coast blank.Aloha,Kokua
about 10 years ago I had a bad batch of those blanks but they didnt implode until they were out on the hot summer sun. One customers board was airbrushed dark blue on the bottom and he brouught it back with giant "concaves under each rail and the nose. There were no bubbles on the blanks but the reaction to heat was pretty bad.
And thats just the beginning. If you use the MDI based foam like Homeblown foam, don’t let the blank sit in the sun at all. I mean that stuff will turn brown overnight. And It takes tint real funky too. Also, the Safari foam you got sucks resin like a sponge, so if you don’t kick you resin off a bit hot, it will soak into the foam an leave dry spots.(Faster than 10 minutes, 10 minutes is way too long for the resin too sit on those grainy sponges) There’s a reason there is so much cheap foam around now, the stuff either inplodes, explodes, sucks resin, repels resin, turns brown, turns bright red, or just disapears all together. Buyer beware
Don’t waste good resources after bad ones. Throw the blanks away and get something that’s better, don’t waste your precious time on crap. I guess it good to practice shaping on?
There is really no way to stop the shrinking, except maybe add a lot more cloth? But then you got super heavy board.
-Jay
Oh yeah, Cracks, fissures in the foam, and gaps in the stringer glue up. Just a few more great things from rookie blank manufacturers.
what are your takes on i-flex foam from alabama??
i have heard some really good things about them but have yet to try it
i heard some FL boys were using it (erie, wooster, possible shape from kech, and orion)
might just start buying that if its good
You need to come over to Brevard county and get some good quality
PU foam from Atlantic Surfoam (Rhyno /US Blanks/Just Foam) or
Eskimo Foam from Surf Hardware. Blanks from the lowest bidder aren’t worth
the risk.
Mike
WALKER 1959…lot of years e xpirience
i’m all about getting some good foam… just was willing to try some other foam…
i just recently shaped a 9’0" round tail long board from safari
that blank was great! and the stringer was nice and easy to shave down
i had bought that from fiberglass FL
the other blanks i bought from a friend
the foam from ross is good… a lil expensive
but it does come from brazil
mike, if i am not mistaken, i believe i have recently seen a stringerless vac. bag epoxy board
you shaped down at sebastian inlet… what a beauty of a board/ nice shape
i might be mistaken though…
Unstable foam has been a problem for some blank manufacturers as they
ramped up production in the wake of Clark’s closure. Glad you got a good
one for your 9’0".
Rhyno is from Brazil, the foam is great and the prices have come down
considerably. US blanks and Just Foam(also available at Atlantic) are of
course from California.
Thanks for the compliment on the Coil you saw at the inlet. They go really
good. Whose board did you see? Just found out Marshall Alberga got the
cover of “Mundo Rad” (Puerto Rican mag) on a Coil.
Enjoy the stoke of shaping!
Mike
Nat speaks the truth. Walker Foam is PROVEN over time. There is a reason they are STILL IN BUSINESS. Quality!
i have seen walker foam before… i liked what i saw, but i don’t know where to get it around here
i am up for using all types of foam, just not EPS because i don’t believe that i am skilled enough for that yet (glassing too)
the coil that i saw belonged to a gentleman whose son was considering riding for you
the mid aged man used to do a lot of stuff with boats (making and repairing)
he was bout 6’0" (??we were in the water so i could be off??) and weighed 180~190
i was talking to him about the coil and he was telling me how you really got in touch with your riders
you talked to them about what they want and pretty much figure out how much foam/ sq. in. should be where
i thought that was awesome and was pretty stoked on that
one day my friend, i will make some good money and i’ll give ya a shout for a new board 
I’ve heard only good things about the Walker foam also, but I haven’t
shaped or even seen any. Don’t know anything about their plugs either,
and finding the right plug for certain boards may require going from mfr.
to mfr. these days. Somebody on here can probably supply contact info
for the east coast.
EPS does take some getting used to but now that it’s almost all I shape
I’ve come around to actually preferring working with it. Never thought I’d
hear myself say that, but it’s true. I have a complete new set of tools
(except for my trusty hitachi/clark planers) that we made specifically for working
with EPS that make all the difference in ease and accuracy of shaping
the stuff.
That was Mike Vachianno you met at the inlet, good guy and his son
(also a Mike) too. PM me when you’re ready for that custom Coil.
Mike
Walker foam is available at
Ocean Avenue Dist
1365 S. Patrick Drive
Melourne, Fla 32937
phone:
Jim 321-777-9494
PM me for the catalog.
walker sucks…in more ways than one…
open cells , sucks resin like crazy, you end up with a weak heavy board…really easy to shape though, woo hoo…!?..had alot of blanks about 1" wider on one side than the other, so forget about counting passes on the rails… walker is my last resort…
safari pretty much seems exactly like clark … ,plugs,shapes,looks,feels,etc, the same…
they threw out some crap blanks back on the clark shutdown, now safari is my first choice, untill these other folks can come up with some some usefull plugs…
and drop their prices… i have acces to better foam from more than one place, then theres all the otheres with 5 to choose from and 20bucks more…they’ll either catch up or fall behind… nice to have choices though…
have a good 4th…in the US …if you’re somewhere else then shoot something in the air anyway…
Onion your makin me cry…
If you understand the “art of foam blowing” you know how things can go wrong. When Clark shut down there were a lot of wierd glue ups that got shipped. There was some chaos in trying to fill the demand. If you have any rejects we can replace them for you.
What you may not know is that Harold Walker stands behind his product. If there is a problem he is always ready to fix it.
You have to know he has a great product or he would never have survived all these years. As far as sucking resin and open cells go, Walker foam is a polyether foam and requires a small change in glassing techniques. Our longtime customers understand how to compensate for the cell structure and achieve great results. We also have a new formula if you prefer to see a smaller cell structure. This new formula is available on most of the smaller plugs sizes.
I refuse to steal this thread so simply PM me and I will elaborate.
after all they are blanks evry one here get a hold of some old early blank pictures…part of the art of shaping is being able to shape out a twist a high spot uncentred stringer cuts …you dont buy a [paint canvas and go what the hell ive got to paint it …close tolerance blanks are nice but sometimes to easy skinn it glass it surf it … peace
My personal experience with walker foam in relation to the other blank mfgrs is the consistency and quality of the foam is one of the least consistent and one of the main problems is with the rockers and glue-ups and also the dimensional consistency.
The foam is fine if you are primarily a hand shaper and like to chip away singles with no need for consistency, coming from a production perspective and having to rely on consistent rocker and blank dimensions you are SOL, honestly even if you do hand-shape singles the inconsistency will come back and bite you when you have to repeat/reshape a customers favorite.
I just ran a few dozen walkers on my milling machine and for the most part things were relatively consistent for walkers but the quality of the glue ups and rockers weren’t very good. I can mill 5-6 times as many shapes as it takes me to mill one walker. The most frustrating blanks to shape for sure, I am speaking in terms of production.
I’m not trying to bash anyone as most everyone here it’s a tough business we have chosen, but it is making me cry when a company that is the oldest blank mfgr around being surpassed by new comers only in the business for a couple years.
I had the same experience with Safari Foam. Shaping was no problem the foam seemed great, but after a couple weeks riding the board it started shrinking…