This is a new Cobalt epoxy Fusion Series shortboard offered at a direct sales discount you won’t find anywhere else.
Cobalt is a new company based in Santa Cruz. Our boards are shaped by master shaper Bob Miller. Each design is rigorously tested by the Cobalt team before going into production. Among the industries highest quality in finishing and construction this board features a lightweight EPS foam core and redefined epoxy structure.
With the purchase of this board you receive the Cobalt Factory Warranty guaranteeing your board from manufacturer defects for 90 days.
Dimensions are Length 6’4”, Width 19”, Thickness 2 1/2”.
Contact Craig at
The thing that caught my attention was that they are using a 0.6mm wood veneer in their sandwich. They’re quick to keep up with developing design construction.
Whether or not anyone’s personal philosophies agree with offshore manufacturing, nobody can argue that Bob’s a bandwagon-jumper. Bob has been making custom vac-bagged surf, wind, and kite boards for 15 years or so, shaping for 30. Using EPS & epoxy for hand made customs longer than Patagonia. Was one of the founders of the original Boardworks…
I know Bob. He made me a couple of boards many years ago, and a good friend was one of his team guys for at least a decade. A year or two ago when Bert started letting the Sway’s community in on some of his secrets, I went by Bob’s shop to run all this new information by him. He recognized everything Bert was talking about and added a few tips of his own. He was really stoked that I was trying this stuff, even though he probably realized it meant I wouldn’t buy too many more boards from him.
I have a Cobalt right now, that I was loaned for the winter. A 9’10" round pin 2+1 longboard. Its just what the conventional wisdom of Swaylocks seems to want from an epoxy sandwich - overly wide, overly thin. The center is 24.5" wide and about 2 5/8" thick. Allows some flex in what would otherwise be extremely rigid construction. Its a little heavier than a Surftech of the same size - better to me for the wind & chop which come with winter waves up here. Feels, under my feet, like a good, lively, but predictable board - not squirty like a light, rigid pop-out, and not sluggish like a thick, heavy log.
Do you know if they are made in Santa Cruz? I just ran across some info and it sounds like they are made in the US?
Quote:
Cobalt, which has its office, warehouse and shaping bay in the industrial area behind Toys R Us, is made up of owner Dave Omara, manager Barry Green and shaper/designer Bob Miller.
Benny thanks for the info. I may look into them bit more. I just assumed they were Asian pop-outs after seeing the shape and price range.
If you read their website or article by Gwen you’ll see that they say that the plugs are scanned in Slovakia same place that does the board works boards…
I think his old ASD 9’0" “Fusion” longboard design was a good compromise as a “big shortboard” as they call them here in Hawaii. Wish I bought one way back when they first staretd selling Boardworks here…
Bob shapes the masters and the customs in Santa Cruz. Anything that makes it to production is done in Slovakia. The board I have, unfortunately, is a demo model & didn’t make it to mass production. Although I like it, other feedback was that anyone buying a board that long, wanted something thicker. Kind of like what Bert says, you have to sell people on the brand & tech first, with something that looks otherwise familiar, and then you can introduce their next shape in something a little more radical…My board did make production…as a 9’2"
I too saw an ad on www.surfinglist.com for the Bob Miller Cobalt boards by a guy in San Diego. They seemed well-priced even for a ‘popout’. I went to the site and it has photos of what appears to be Cobalts being hand-shaped and polished in a factory in Santa Cruz - are these just the masters and the stock boards are actually made in Eastern Europe?
The site went into detail about the two different fabrication methods - one with the veneer (less expensive) and one with more glass. Different weight EPS cores , as well.
They had an 11’0" shape in the more expensive build method that looks nice but if they are just ‘higher quality’ Surftechs I suppose I’ll pass…
Bob Miller has probably produced, by-hand, more custom compsands in California than any other maker of surf and windsurfing boards. He could never really make the custom business work. The boards were the same weight as the newest Pu/Pe boards, or lighter, and you could drop them off a truck at 60 MPH and they wouldn’t ding.
I’m about 90% sure these are made in Slovakia. Bob charged WAY WAY more for his custom boards built in Burlingame. He’s getting closer, he is using parabolic stringer (like Loehr’s blanks), but it looks like he is using way too much glass.
This sort of thing was something I expected with Firewire coming out…competition from non-domestically manufactured compsands. The Boardworks boards were always comparable to Surftech but not marketed well enough. Now it looks like a master compsand shaper is going it alone…
I checked the website and took a good look at the composite lay up schedules on the different products. Impressive amounts of glass are used over and under the skin cores. Obviously the ultra light concept is being discounted in favor of durability.
I’ve read here that some of you compsand guys are using super light cloth under the skin core and 4 oz outer on top and bottom. I’ve also read here of some disasterous results including leakage and breakage.
FWIW, Cobalt is using 5 - 8 oz inner and 8 - 16 oz (total) outer. The skin cores range from 0.6mm wood veneer to 3mm 8 lb PVC foam. The “Redline” series incorporates some partial stringers made of 6 lb high density foam wrapped in 5 oz cloth. It appears as if an additional layer is added somewhere the rails.
Hi John, for bigger longboards I’m currently using a schedule not unlike theirs:
4 oz e cloth everywhere
Bottom skin is 4 oz - 1/16" (1.625mm) balsa - 4 oz
Top skin: 4 oz - 1/16" balsa - double 4 oz outside
Blank is sealed with spackle, extremely thin. This means about 8 oz of resin to wet out a layer of 4 oz cloth on a 10’0 board (!) Skins then go on the wet inside glass, and into the bag. After bagging, the rails are attached & shaped, and all the balsa is then sealed with a very warm, thin, painted-on layer of epoxy which is sanded before the outside is hand-laminated.
Using the spackle on the EPS and the thin epoxy on the balsa I have completely eliminated soaking resin, air bubbles, dry spots, zits, and pinholes. I put on both hotcoats as cherry coats when the lams are 4 hours old or so. By prepping the materials and laminating tight, my sanding is down to surform around the tape line and about 5 minutes of hand sanding. Rattle can gloss and its done. Super duper.
10’2 is 19 lb
Super pinched rails - hard to believe this board is 3.25" thick in the middle Its got belly & dome…
Its cool to see parabolic stringers becoming used more.
But the Surftech/Boardworks style will never dial in flex if they wrap the rails with the skin.
Part of the whole she-bang is having the stringer on the rails, and using as little radial curvature as possible in the skins. That reduces the skins’ contribution to bending in the plane of the board as much as possible - making the flex controlled by the rail stringer instead. (Radial curvature is the curve around the rail - perpendicular to the centerline - in this case). Plus it makes setting the glass a lot easier b/c the skins are not stressed when the resin sets.
Then flex can be dialed in by altering the rail width, or the glassing schedule over the rail.
It is somewhat surprising to me that someone would glue up a parabolic stringer but not take the advantageous next step of putting the radial curvature in the stringer (ie: the curved part of the rails) and let the skins be AS FLAT AS POSSIBLE from side to side.
That is, btw, exactly what I predict Surftech will do in another year…come out with pre-formed PVC rail stringers and dialed-in flex.
I can tell you that your exactly right. We chose ultimate strenght (against compression failures) and performance into account when we decided on the weight specs. Something between the super light stuff out there and the traditional weighted poly PU. There is quite a few other things we do as well in these boards but Ill save that for another time.
I can tell you that your exactly right. We chose ultimate strenght (against compression failures) and performance into account when we decided on the weight specs. Something between the super light stuff out there and the traditional weighted poly PU. There is quite a few other things we do as well in these boards but Ill save that for another time.
kokos
Bob did this in his customs, too. They would come out a little lighter than Pu/Pe boards, and a LOT stronger and more durable. I thought, with history as the guide, that weight should be pushed as light as possible while maintaining durability close to the same.
The problem is that there is a lot of different kinds of “durability” (stating the obvious, sorry). Were trying to give more value. Boards that are less likely to break in half have more value if the down side isnt punitive weight. Cosmetic durability is secondary but also plays a part. Structural durability, overdone cosmetic durability in a package that is about equal to a “comp” version in a PU Poly is done on purpose. The fragility of a poly PU board on the cosmetic side (when you want it to be light) is well known and its also lacking in the structural strength department as well. When we ran breaking tests on std PU Poly vs standard sandwich vs our current construction it was obvious that little adjustments make a big difference (50% +). The challenge was not “lock up” the board by making it so stiff.
Stiff is brittle, stiff dosent perform right… this is where we put our effort to make it different.
Surfstar101, All the info is on the site about fittings. Stringers do follow the perimeter although we dont place stringers in the shortboards. We started that system in the fall of 05.
The problem is that there is a lot of different kinds of “durability” (stating the obvious, sorry). Were trying to give more value.
I totally get it. I appreciate more value in my boards, I order customs a little thicker and heavily glassed than most people.
But I think the market appreciates lightweight. And, if you made a composite shortboard product that weighed MUCH less than a standard Pu/Pe and was only marginally more durable against snappage, I think the market would eat it up. Of course as a composite it would already be more impervious to small dings. My best guess is weight sells even better than optimized flex.
I guess my impression is (and this is paraphrased from one of grubby’s faxes), the market will leap over itself to get a lighter board that is just as durable. But it will not leap over itself to get a more durable board that is just as light.
Surftech, also, is in the market as MUCH more durable shortboards, and marginally lighter. Firewire is going to enter the market dramatically lighter, and only marginally more durable (and already has top pros using their product).
Blakestah… The best thing about the surf biz is that not everyone has to or does the same thing and thats ok, in fact its good.
Light is right but design has to evolve to take advantage of this fact.
Up until about a year ago, Bob was one of a handful of guys IN THE WORLD that was designing his boards start to finish for lightweight sandwich construction.
For every guy who says he wants the lightest board possible, Ill show you two guys who think thats crap. Internet polls and BB’s give a warped sense of reality…
The most common problem with traditional surfboards is that they breakdown, break and damage easily for a consumer product. We think that people should expect more and get more for a fair price. We certainly can offer lighter boards and we may do that in the future but for now its about value and building reputation and trust.
The funniest thing is that 80% of the comments are about how shiny the boards are and how they feel to the touch, like a Poly PU glossed custom. (We traditionally gloss and polish but not with traditional materials and methods) people rarely comment about the weight being too much or too little…
Grubby’s faxes…Im not going to touch that…They stand on their own…
For every guy who says he wants the lightest board possible, Ill show you two guys who think thats crap.
Just guessing: Longboarders prefer heavy…ultra-performance guys want light. Glassy surfers like light…bumpy/choppy surfers dont.
The most common problem with traditional surfboards is that they breakdown, break and damage easily for a consumer product.
Allow me to take this one step further…the ‘real’ problem is surfers, especially the young, dont understand value and continue to purchase pupe boards that self destruct under their feet. Its ok to them cuz thats what the pros ride, so they feel cool, their peers think their cool and therefore worth the expense, in contrast to how little they really want to pay.
The funniest thing is that 80% of the comments are about how shiny the boards are and how they feel to the touch, like a Poly PU glossed custom
Thats a big home run there Kokos. There’s something about shine…just makes you feel all warm and fuzzy. It just sells.
