…An abomination? Both? Neither?
Would be interested to hear some opinions re: the below…
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2005/02/20/business/news/14_15_312_19_05.txt
P.O.P.E.
Oops, just noticed this covered in another thread. My apologies.
P.O.P.E.
yea very interesting …
commendable effort …
i can forsee one problem at this stage …
and anyone who blows urethane foam will know what i mean …
as the foam expands inside the shell it moves , as soon as liquid foam touches the sides of the shell it sticks there , but as the foam is still expanding and moving inside , a shear movement is created , thats one of the biggest reasons why foam thats blown into a finished product tends to delam easily and become a rattling foam piece inside the shell after the bonds at the skin have been broken …
look at the sailboards made in the 70s with rotamoulding then injected urethane cores …
but yea theres a niche there , made in america , so thats 2 positives …
regards
BERT
Very interesting. 
But, on another note: Since a typical funboard (8,6 or so) could suit almost any size/skill of surfer, how come blanks aren’t blown to EXACT specifications? Then, all you would have to do is buy the blank, sand off the lines from the mold seams, and glass it. No shaping at all required. Seems to make sense to me. Whadayathink?
Oh, and I still don’t understand that price they are asking. Five hundred bucks is not motivating to me when I can have a board made for under three hundred still, without doing any labor myself. Shapers charge me, on average, 50-100 bucks for a shape. The blank runs me about 50-60 for a 7 footer, and the glass job is usually about 150-175, so I end up paying, as I mentioned, about three hundred or less.
Their product would have to be a hundred bucks to get me interested.
No, make that 29 dollars at Target. And then I’d just use it for travel.
Ah, screw it. I don’t want it for free.
To satisfy an itch, I went to Surfride today to ask if they had one of these in stock. They had a prototype, but none for sale. I said, “And article I read said they were shipping a whole bunch to you and that they couldn’t keep up with orders.” The kid looked at me and said, “I don’t think so.”
So, the board was translucent, like the picture above, only red. And, I may be wrong here, but it looked (after being ridden a couple times) that the foam was already detaching from the inside of the plastic shell.
And it was VERY flexible. No stringer. I question the integrity of the thing. A guy hit it with a hammer, but that didn’t impress me. It isn’t often that I encounter, while surfing, hammer-swinging people in the lineup. That would take all the fun out of the sport.
Do any of you have trouble with hammers in the lineup? Maybe it’s a growing problem.
No, a foot-thick lip is not the same as a falling hammer.
I wasn’t impressed with the board, even if it were on sale for 199 or even 99.
Might be a good idea for beginners.
But, again, they are going to be asking over five hundred.
For that price I can get a custom 8,6 with color and volan glass, a solid board that can easily last ten to twenty years if cared for properly.
As long as those damn hammer-swinging kooks stay out of the lineup.
BIC uses a similar process (simplified version of there production sailboards) - great for beginers who know they will be dinging their boards and mishandling them. But once performance takes priority in their minds, they look for other types of rides.
BIC longboards were selling for $199 the last time I went to the Outer Banks - these guys have a lot of work ahead of them.
I just don’t understand why they would be spending so much money on a product that will become messed up so quickly like Fairmont said that he went to Surf Ride and the foam was already detaching from the shell that was probably only a couple of months old, why would anybody want to buy an obsolete product like this?
It just doesn’t make sense
Disposable. Deja vu all over again.