color me skeptical
not that I don’t think it could work, it could and probably does, to some degree
but the website hype is just too over the top for my tastes
I think thats due to the foam and glass losing its pop Barry…and the quality of the stringer used …for example ,a well made t-band in a longboard has qualities far beyond cosmetic appeal , and can give an indefnate lifespan to the board…I think the trick is to get an older foam formula that can go the distance with the good stringer…off the shelf blanks these days have a predetermined lifespan…I think most resins also have slowly been tweaked to suit a somewhat “disposable” product , more so than being a durable product…had a recent discussion on the quality of volane cloth available these days…
what happens when they break?
and can you saw through the carbon “brain” <-----(I hate this term for a structure, doesn’t apply) to tweak the template, what about adjusting the rocker?
These blanks are for machine shaped boards imo, and any consumer who is willing to eat the extra cost per blank for a board order, is going to buy and sell more boards than the extended memory warrants at the time of purchase. If that’s the selling point.
If its a better mouse trap, then match the price of the item you are trying to compete with and prove the product on merit.
Plus this is an old idea.
Interesting questions regarding the “Brain” and the blank/board it will produce. Barry nailed most of the questions as he usually does. It would be a great concept to recycle the “brain” but most likely not a possiblity as it would need to get cleaned, sanded, etc then re-inserted and glued up. Not to mention who knows how much flex it has endured.
Only time will tell how these things preform and how popular they will become. I remember thinking the Firewire’s would never catch on but look at those now. Same with Surf Tech short boards, they had a big run too. All could be seen as marketing ploys but defintely have some value in the progression of surfboard design.
If you decide you want to try one we have them.
What will be the results over time???
We love to hear the feedback.
Brad
Yeah Vaeske,
The glassing schedule is just as important as ever because you’re still riding an EPS blank which isn’t the most durable foam when it’s not glassed, as we all know. The options and glassing schedules are going to be limitless with this. We’ve been using kevlar, carbon/kevlar combos etc…in glassing schedules on regular boards for different shapes and sizes and been having a blast experimenting. This is just another very cool option for surfboard construction that will open up more possibilites. If the board doesn’t break but the foam fails, then it seems at this point that the core should be able to be repurposed into a new blank which would be very cool. Looking forward to hearing everyone else’s feedback as well.
Hey VÆSKE
Take a look at the ‘first time vac bagging thread’ I posted a few months ago - it’s got pictures of how I laid up the carbon rails with tape. It’s a real easy process but a little time consuming - works very well though. If you have any questions send me a PM.
Cheers
Rich
Ski manufactures have been wrestling with Flex for decades. Many ingenious innovations have been used. One is a hydraulic pistons, like shock absorbers that could control flex by turning a dial.
Seems to me that the outer fiberglass shell is going to have 1 flex profile, while the inner carbon “brain” will have another. The relatively soft foam in between is likely to suffer whenever these two flex profiles don’t match up perfectly, causing the board to degrade from the inside out. Assuming the carbon fiber is stiffer than the fiberglass, eventually the “brain” could end up rattling around inside a cavity it has dug for itself inside the foam.
Everything Swerfle said and more.
- Flat carbon isn't all that stiff, if you compare it to a 3 D shape like a rail. It will be stiffest in the center where the carbon is, not in the back area where you want it. Make a couple of pure stringerless and see where they buckle (hint, it is right in front of the fin cluster). Floppy tails have no drive.
- You are mating the least elastic material (carbon) next to the most elastic material (light weight foam). Shear will kill it, unless the carbon is place exactly in the center of the boards natural shear axis.
- You get none of the impact strength you would add by putting it on the skin.
- Stringerless boards, without reinforcement flex too much. It will ride nothing like the same board with either a stringer or a stringerless with carbon rails.
Pity most of you may not know Dan, whose boardmaking and composite experience is well above most.
But bagging what we don’t really know is par for the course…
thanks thirdshade. I get my bagging setup dialed end of summer looking forward to it. …gonna wait to see a full dissasembly of an Incide board after it’s been slayed for a season or two.
Huie: those pics on that thread for your build are no more, where can I see that work?
Hi wildy,
I doubt your comment was directed at me personally, but its certainly true that I know basically nothing about these boards. I’d love to try one (or three).
However, I’m not so sure its a terrible thing to critique (“bag on”) something one knows only a little about. In the late 30’s an advertising executive came up with “brainstorming” as a creative problem solving strategy. The idea was to free the mind from conventional perspectives, and allow a group to build on each other by developing a culture where no ideas were too outrageous, and no one had to worry about being “shot down” prematurely. revolutionary ideas require revolutionary thinking.
Its a great concept in theory, except that in practice, studies have shown that it doesn’t work as well as an environment where critiques are encouraged. To me it wasn’t too surprising to learn that a group of people could generate more effective designs by refining their ideas through a process of identifying and resolving weaknesses as opposed to just letting their imaginations run wild, but what may be suprising is that studies suggest that “brainstorming” may also reduce the NUMBER of ideas a group of people can generate. (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer) What we do here, where people come up with ideas on theri own, and then subject them to criticism/scrutiny/collaboration of people with a variety of backgrounds appears to be the most productive form of creative problem solving.
So maybe my comment was completely off base, maybe it wasn’t. I was just raising a potential concern. Personally, I’d love to hear critique of my thinking. I may weigh the critique according to how informed/uninformed the source, but I welcome critique either way. My comment (like the vast majority of comments on this forum [I assume]) was not meant to bag something just for being new or different. I only intended to challenge the marketing propaganda on the website that seemed to suggest the boards would last much longer than one of traditional construction. It seems to me that one advantage of a traditional stringer is that it is directly attached to the fiberglass and therefore more likely to have an integrated flex. As has been mentioned before, perpendicular stringers attached to the skins are difficult to make out of carbon fiber because the carbon is so difficult to shape. (as a side note, I know nothing about carbon nor vac bagging in general, but I wonder if this problem could be overcome by shaping a stringerless blank, then cutting it in half down the “stringer line”, applying carbon fiber to the halves independently, and then re-attaching the two halves with another sheet of carbon around the whole thing. presumeably the carbon laps along the stringer line would help prevent the carbon stringer from cutting its way through the deck, if that were a problem. seems like a pain, but maybe it could work.)
At any rate, it seems good and natural to me that people should be exploring alternative constructions in order to utilize the benifits of carbon fiber. I wish I had time money and tools to participate. Either way, I think robust critiques will help facilitate that process. Maybe the “brain” will revolutionize the surf industry, but only time will tell, and to me, there is good reason to suspect that these boards would loose their special pop over time much like any other board. We have learned to deal with that on traditional boards, we could deal with that on these too if there were sufficient benefits to justify widespread adoption.
cheers
No problem, I don’t try to be personal.
There is a difference between constructive and other criticisms, and Dan didn’t get where he is today without a lot of trial, error and effort. He knows what he learned.
Good to see others putting in the effort, and then theres always the others who don’t.
loving Dan’s FW potatonater design
short, fat(wide) and flat with a deep spiny vee and a quad
skips like a stone across the flats
carves like a skateboard on the face
its a tomo for guys with curves… simple
would’ve been nice to have a large single box to try it as one of your inline singles
carbon’s not cheap though
and the price could get prohibitive depending on future avaliability
wonder if you could blow the blank with this insert inside the mold with holes to allow the foam to pass thru to bind the two materials more securely
You have the same problem or with traditional foam fiberglass a wood stringer. All the Materials used in surfboard construction will have a different flex.
The foam with have the most flex until it reaches the point of breaking. The Fiberglass shell and wood stringer aid in keeping the board from reaching that point. The internal " brain " will simply be another element keeping the foam from reaching that critical point. From what I am reading it will also have a unique flex. I would like to see some of thses blanks made in leathes for Long boards as well as Guns.