With all of the “new” blanks out on the market has anyone done some real comparisons of the products. I keep hearing praises and horror stories of the same blanks from different shapers. Please, any Swaylockers have some blank reviews or product testing?
…go with Surfblank, Burford, Teccel or Bennett…you ll not be disappointed…
I shaped my first foam board in 1960. Up until then I believed balsa would not be replaced by foam. Wrong, eh? The only foam I had access to then was Walker Foam. Since they are still out there, don’t you think they know something about producing a consistant , quality product?? I use them still.
Hi ,
I using teccel, and found them really realy nice, the glueup is as good as the ex-clark and they are very nice to hand shape.
I do not have access to Walker Foam in europe, and find it a pity. For fishes, the 6’6" fish teccel will able you to have max thickness of 2 7/8…
Courage
Arnaud
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…go with Surfblank, Burford, Teccel or Bennett…you ll not be disappointed…
Yes. The Ozzy foam makes everything else look like crap.
walker foam since 1959! who is Channel islands using? rusty? WALKER
hANging out at a local shop, cosensus rests with walker for all around near pre black monday quality that clark had. tears your knuckles sometimes . …
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With all of the “new” blanks out on the market has anyone done some real comparisons of the products. I keep hearing praises and horror stories of the same blanks from different shapers. Please, any Swaylockers have some blank reviews or product testing?
Reviews of foam are all over the map some good some bad…Aussie foam seems to have the best reviews…limited on who can get them though.
just talked with the guys at the Becker facility, they use Walker for longboards but have found their shortboard blanks too soft and too many “large bubbles” in them. They advised to try the blanks from Brazil, the company recommended by Clark himself, when I pick up my last two clark foam shortboards I’ll try to get the name and more info. Thanks for all the input, anyone out there actually shape many different blanks from the different manufacturers? I’d like to get some “hands-on” accounts of the various foams.
shaped a walker today…seems like the stringer glue up has improved compared to how they used to be a few years ago…foam seems pretty nice to work with…BUT-
one thing i noticed while templating was that one side of the blank was about 1/2"-3/4" wider all through the mid section, then i thought maybe the stringer was curved … but striger is straight…but something is screwy…
also i came across alot of good size air voids in the foam while taking out thickness from the bottom, possiby about 15 -20 pea size holes concentrated in mostly a square foot size area… i was going to actually get a picture for you guys if they were still there at my final thickness. but all the exciting stuff was gone by then, so that issue seemed to turn out ok on this one …but it could cause problems if i would have needed the thickness i had when these voids were present…
also something i have never heard before… when i was doing some finishing stuff(after i had my earplugs out)…so this had most likely been going on the whole time…i kept hearing a sound like the snap crackle pop of rice crispies/ or very light rain on dry leaves , if you dont know the cereal…
anyway i was looking around like where is that coming from? so i turned down the music, and it was coming from the blank… my guess is that it is gas escaping from the foam that has just been exposed to the surface…it stopped after a couple of minuits…
might be trying some other brands of foam here and there so well see how it all turns out.
I just started cutting into a Safari Foam blank yesterday. It seems like a heavy consistent density - like the old Clark Blanks. I haven’t found any bubbles or flaws but the shop where I obtained the blank had a shaped blank on display with a fairly large flaw in it.
He had it on display to let people know the blanks aren’t perfect. I appreciated his honesty and his offer that if there were any problems, I could bring it back for an exchange.
That’s better than I got when I encountered Clark blanks with bowed stringers… nobody seemed willing to accept a blank back once it was cut. This Safari blank has a nice straight stringer as do some Walker blanks I have.
YMMV.
The praises and horror stories have a lot to do with the fact that there is a lot of inconsistencies occurring from blank to blank from any given blank manufacturer. When Clark closed all existing blank makers had to increase production in order to meet the new demand. That means having to hire new workers, train them and get them up to speed. At the same time new start up companies are rushing to get something out the door. Most are still working out the bugs in their product. The consistency is all over the place from excellent to poor. This is with Urethane as well as EPS. Right now its kind of a crap shoot from blank to blank.