I have always bought my resins from a surfboard material supplier, I buy Isothalic resin which I use straight for lams and add wax in styrene for hotcoating, but i’ve been looking at various grp suppliers (in uk) trying to find resin cheaper in bulk, my question is can you use any clear polyester resin for laming as standard polyester resin seems to be cheaper than specialised surfboard resin if so can you also use it for hotcoating after addind wax in styrene. Any info would be mucho appreciated. Cheers O.
If you are using the Seabase Isophthalic Resin (ISO 7X) then you are using a highly refined resin with several additional additives making it optically bright, UV stable, low styrene emitting and very clear. It is made in expensive glass-lined stills for purity, and we pay extra for selected and graded raw materials and the extra time it takes to “cook” and then run using extra-clean pipes and stills. You can make a surfboard using any old GP resin, but many contain impurities and wax - it will look very discoloured, and will not have the above resin’s qualities. Yoiu get what you pay for.
The difference in the bulk price of the very best & the very worst GP resin content of a surfboard is £2.00, although using the lesser resin means you would certainly have a lesser quality board. I would respectfully suggest you might make better savings in other areas - for example, changing from FCS to Futures would save you at least £5, and your boards would be better as a result!
Cheers for the info, I am using seabase materials at present and am pretty stoked with everything i’ve bought from them. I use euro fins mostley which are cheaper again, futures look kinda a bitch to install in comparison.O.
try to get it through some of the dealers who deal with norpol resins you can get it cheaper in bulk and they do a surfboard resin similar to the seabase one, at least you dont have to import it to ireland like i do puts up the cost a bit more!!!
Hi, could you please post a picture of the euro fins plugs/fins? Are they compatible with FCS? regards, Håvard
The Norpol resin is not similar to the Seabase one - it lacks several important ingredients, including the most important, a UV stabiliser matched to the resin. We sell both resins, and the Norpol resin from other suppliers is the same price as, or more than the Seabase Iso 7X. As I said earlier, you only get what you pay for.
Hi, could you please post a picture of the euro fins plugs/fins? Are they compatible with FCS? regards, Håvard Seabase in the UK and France sells the euro fin plugs and three styles of fins. The plugs are actually superior to the FCS plugs, very well moulded, but the fins are not. The don’t look as “pretty”, but they do work. The plugs and fins are both totally compatable with FCS, except they are a great deal cheaper. The saving is around £5(€7.40 or €7.50) per set. The plugs are fitted in the same way, and measure the same. But whatever, Futures and Speedfins are far superior systems IMO. The plugs can be sold anywhere in Europe except France, where a patent prevents their sale, but the fins can be sold anywhere in the World, patent or not, since they are an aftermarket product. A major court case in Hawaii established the precedent, thanks to Surfco Hawaii.
Mus Steward: Could you please e-mail me @ Thanks