Putting glass under futures boxes?

General Discussion
1

I’m wondering if this is something people do, and if not then why not? I’ve actually done it already and I’ve had no problems with the install or the board I did it on. I’m not one to sink or otherwise damage boxes with my surfing and I try to be careful otherwise, but it seems like nice insurance. 

I’ve only done it once so far, but I did so as follows. First, I cut the flange a tiny bit deeper. I didn’t alter the depth of the deeper part of the slot. the I put some 4oz cloth in the slot and cut it so it’d sit slightly outside the limits of the flange. I put the cloth in the slot then just put the box in. It fit snugly, but went in smoothly without wrinkling the glass. Then I took the box out and the cloth stayed in perfectly conformed, perhaps because of static charge. EPS and glass are static-y stuff. I saturated the glass with some low viscosity resin, making sure the foam got some resin too, not just the glass. Then I put the box in and proceed as normal, capped with a layer of glass then finished and went surfing. Fun board.

I don’t know if this is necessary at all, but I’ve seen quite a few people sink or otherwise mess up a futures box in their boards and require a repair… Like when one side of the box is pushed down into the foam and it’s tilted. Seems like a good thing to do in lower density EPS, unless theres’s some bad side to this I’m unaware of or it doesn’t actually help. It seems like it’d help prevent damage, but I have no real evidence to back this up. I don’t recall ever seeing anybody talk about it here. Anybody have any input?

2

I’d say good insurance as you put it.  The key to the strength of any flange based box is the contact with the glass skin.  The foam provides very little strength  on its own.  By putting glass under the box, making sure to extend out the the underneath of the flange as you have done, and making sure you have good contact with the glass skin behond, you are adding resistance to rolling in the routed hole.  ProBox recommends this method.  I like it.

all the best

3

I’ve done it once before as well, but the results were not great. My mistake was the I made the cloth too short so it was only sticking out past the flange about an inch & wouldn’t stay down at the edge causing a bubble the entire length which had to be cut out afterwards(which kind of defeats the purpose of doing it in the first place). I’ll do it again on my next boards because I think it does strengthen the install, but I’ll just make the cloth longer sticking out.

4

Well FCS plugs were supposedly prone to failure (according to Sways Bros) .  So now Futures??

5

Not saying prone to failure. Most of the ones I’ve seen damaged are on off the rack boards that most likely have lower density cores, 4oz on the bottom and who knows if there’s a patch over the box. Lightweight boards are nice but some people are pushing their luck.