Kiteboard Construction

General Discussion
1

Anyone know how these things are made? I had a bit of a look through the archives but couldn’t find much.

2

Been digging into kiteboard construction myself lately. Looks like most twin-tip style boards are made from divinycell or similar high-density foam with multiple layers of glass on each side.

Benny1 on here made a nice looking compsand kiteboard.

Directionals are similar to regular surfboards, just more glass for durability.

Here’s some useful links I came across:

http://blog.jamestowndistributors.com/?s=kite

http://customkiteboard.com/Boards.htm

http://www.charliet.net/boardbuilding/index.asp

I made a light-wind board out of 3/8" plywood. Glassed it with 1 layer of 4oz. on each side and built up the edges with rovings. It’s heavy, but it was cheap and works well. I may make another and use a router to remove alot of material outside of the footpads. The board doesn’t need to be 3/8" thick all the way out to the edges. I just ran a 45º router bit around the edge of mine:

3

some guys do it this way

Wooden cores

Glass Epoxy bottom and top

High density molecular PE as a finishing layer AND sublimating prints into PE

All pressed together

4

or a rocker jig and vacuum setup for compsand…

http://www.xs4all.nl/~ebb/kiteboard/html/handleiding/hl_25bou.html?page=eee

5

I’ve built a dozen or so kiteboards and am getting ready to build a 6’ mutant style compsand for surf. Lots of construction techniques out there, especially for the manufactured / pop-out boards. The most common custom construction technique is a shaped divynicel / airex core with multiple layers of glass/carbon all layed up and put into a vacuum bag and pressed on a rocker table. This is basically the way I’ve been doing it for most of my boards and it produces the strongest, lightest board IMHO. Go to kiteforum.com and search the boardbuilding posts and you’ll find other methods, some worked others didn’t. The biggest issue you typically have to combat is board strength. Kiteboards are exposed to some pretty hard stresses, especially when landing a big or fast jump.