Hey gang,
Love the look of these Pyzel White Tiger sleds, anyone got one and can give me dimensions (nose , tail, centre etc) so I can knock out a template?
Cheers Marty
Pyzel is a great shaper and designer. But your copy won’t be the same unless it’s made from an Arctic Foam blank of the proper length and rocker. That is Pyzel’s foam of choice.
pyzels made from all different brands of foam world wide…..can try shaping something like that as inspiration..
JJF’s White Tigers are primarily shaped from Arctic Foam.
Yup probably his personal boards. .. i laminated for a place that did big labels under license..did a few surf stars boards from time to time
Three major poly foam manufacturers based here in the USA. Arctic, U.S. Blanks and Millennium. None of which has the capacity to single handily supply the Surf Industry. All the major surfboard manufacturers buy at least a partial mix of those three. Lost, Pyzel, Channel Islands and Sharp Eye all buy a mix based on availability. I do know that Lost purchases big #’s of Arctic. And Lost is a primary customer of Arctic. Channel Islands has always used big #’s of U.S. Blanks and Millennium plus some Arctic. Sharp Eye and Pyzel use a lot if not mostly Arctic.
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A lot of “formula one blanks” and “ x-tra foam blanks” are siding now here in europe with the artics and teccels. US blanks are expensive must come from france and pay the delivery.
i never shaped any of the “Formula 1 blanks”
but i got two boards with them and they are really, really white.
Boards are looking good with the F1 blanks.
cheers and good waves.
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The place i worked at here we used mainly burford…some fomular one ..some core…we were making lost ..Dhd ..Pyzel ..timmy paterson.. we had artic at one stage but cargo from usa was to expensive..I use formular one blanks here for my boards. The foam is really nice and hard and they hold up good .they are really white nearly grey / blue,nearly dont suit a spray white.
lucky for me they are made not to far away.
I think you will see more Arctic “down under” in 2026 and on a regular basis. The partnership of Surftech and Arctic will open up new territories for Arctic Foam. Shipping won’t be such an issue.
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Not sure surfblanks might be still going…dion shut down after barry bennet passed..family did not want to continue… live in bali so not up on all the industry going on In Australia
You ex-pats love those lefts, huh. Lol. Yes originally Arctic was a Surfblanks(Midget) formula. But they had a shrinkage problem that Midget wouldn’t own up to. And don’t get me wrong I idolized Midget. Their current formula is something Bennet came up with. Still an Aussie type formula, but more conducive to hand shaping.
Yup 5 minute walk to the lefts….just after clark finshed up production ,remember having shrinking issues ,heart breaking blanks shrinking before glassing
After Clark closed I got a dozen Surfblanks from a guy out at Sand Island on Oahu,Hawaii. He bought a container full and had it shipped up from Down Under. He pre-cut about four into a “Noserider” file that I had created on graph paper. He bundled them up with shrink wrap and sent them on the barge inter island to the Port of Kahului, Maui. All was well. They shaped out just fine. They had the Ply T-band that is kind of a stock stringer for longboard blanks from Australia. I like that stringer and tried to order it here in the U.S., but anything over 8’ ply in the U.S. is hard to source. I soon saw that the Surfblanks were harder than super soft Clarks. Which meant they were prone to tearing. I’m not a production shaper so I just slowed it down. All twelve blanks shaped out fine. Nice pretty and white. They took paint well and glassed out lighter. Absorbed less resin. In the end the last one that was glassed shrunk. It shrunk so bad that it wasn’t fit to be sold in a shop. I finally sold it to an illegal cook that worked at a local Mexican restaurant. Didn’t even get the cost of the glass job out of it.
A slip of the thumb and it’s gone. On into oblivion.