Observations:
A) Last time I did this I found the rails were the worst to take off - that’s where I lost the most foam.
B) If you burn PU resin the glass comes out good as new. It only comes out black if you’re burning it with carbon. I guess this is polluting and the glass is weakened… but it seems like an interesting effect
Questions:
- How can a PU board be shaped so that the blank inside can be more easily recycled into another board later?
- In recycling blanks, did you find some glass comes off easier than others?
- expanding foam is generally not advisable but it has been used alright under wood veneer… at what point is it ok for a bit of hole filling and when is it not? I filled some holes with chunks of foam cut off the tail last time… perhaps a bit of spray foam filler on a test board is ok…
Since I can’t get EPS, entropy bio resin, nor PU blanks in Hong Kong, this is for personal boards I fly in with but the main reason I’m interested in this is I don’t like waste
Start out with a board 10 ft long, 28 inches wide, and 5 inches thick… Problem solved. There are plenty of boards in there.
Don’t get mad at me… You ask a silly question you are going to get silly answers. A surfboard is a surfboard only once. All other foam creations are freaks shows at best.
You should look a little harder for local foam and poly resin. You shouldn’t limit yourself to one “brand” of resin. Resinhead is right. A surfboard made out of a surfboard is an insestious bastard.
You need about an inch of extra width and an inch of extra thickness in the board to deal with the places where the glass rips foam off. If you make a board that you’ll be stripping later, it’s probably not going to be a good board until after you reshape it, or the reshaped board will be too narrow or too thin. If you have fin boxes, you have to figure out how you’re going to deal with them. Do you cut them out, or leave them in? How does that affect the next board.
Otherwise, you need really good sanding skills and you have to sand the board down to the foam. It’s really messy, but you’ll have more foam left if you sand it carefully. Once you get to the point where the glass is really thin, it will come off easier, but there’s a point where you start burning through and start losing foam fast. Not a fun thing to do because of all the fiberglass dust. You need a sanding room, coveralls and a good respirator.
Why do you want to recycle the board? Too many dings? Broken?
PU/PE boards have a certain lifetime. After continued use, a daily driver will lose its magic. The board will feel dead and lack the flexy responsiveness that made it magic. Sometimes it takes years, sometimes less. Think of anything that you constantly bend back and forth, it will eventually get weak.
If you had a good PU/PE board that feels dead, you may not be able to make another good board with that foam.
I only ride magic boards I’ve bought from great shapers when the waves are really good. I try to keep them from getting beaten up as much as possible. I could get another one, but it probably won’t be the same.
Well… . It’s like that Buddhist painting with water thing. It evaporates in the sun but that’s the point. Like making a wooden board you simply have to burn no matter how good it was.
The last blank I got from a friend for free. He’d shaped it and crashed it so I just had a go without any plan. The thing turned out totally different to the boards I’d planned and spent on. I just plowed into it. The end result got me into some riding I really didn’t expect. It’s just a different experience.
I’ve looked at all kinds of ways to reform boards but nothing really works. this is second best. PU is nice to plow into anyway.
Just would be amazing to have a material we can shape with our hands and reuse. It wouldn’t need to be cheap.
Then again, maybe this all comes about because I can’t give away my boards! 
Longboard → Mini Simmons → Bench
Longboard → 2 mini Simmons → 2 benches?