Alright fellow Swaylockians, These are pictures of a broken Salomon “S” core. Enjoy. Also, there are 9 pictures, and I can only do 3 to a post, so please let me finish posting before you guys start posting! Thanks -Carl
Alright fellow Swaylockians, These are pictures of a broken Salomon “S” core. Enjoy. Also, there are 9 pictures, and I can only do 3 to a post, so please let me finish posting before you guys start posting! Thanks -Carl
More Pictures…
Last 3… -Carl
Ok- I tried to hit as many angles as I could, If you guys have any questions, I’ll have the board for a couple more days so hit me with any that you have… and any other pictures of different aspects of the board can be taken also, if desired. Have Fun -Carl
OK, I see some very good points…parts of the rails, and some ridiculously weak points…the styro stringer with all that wasted drippy glue
Seems the rails need more reinforcement.
Airinside, out of Switzerland (?) uses airex for the struts, but the rails don’t look as well fitted, but that board broke at the rail first, so…
Seems a case of too many strong spots right next to …AIR.
Doyles don’t break, and they are honeycomb with divinicell struts, with rails really well glued together for a kinda medium weight board.
Is there a vent?. Where the waves powerful? I wonder if it started to break down before the actual board breakage?
flex is good… i tryed one of those board when they were just experimenting and they are just way too stiff.
too much carbon.
not sure a substantially beefed up stringer, being much stiffer, would really affect the stiffness of the overall ride. The shape might be a culprit here. The left over glue certainly affects the stiffness of the worthless styro bulkheads.
I suspect all those hollow builders like carbon to keep the flat surfaces from flexing, causing delam or worst, buckling. Unfortunately, that’s exactly carbons favorite characteristic…just joking, but almost true.
Possibly a unidirectional carbon, to flex along the length, and be stiff across.
or forgo carbon, in lue of sandwich technology, to keep the top and bottom surfaces flat.
lots of questions:
Now that i’ve seen those close up pics I’m wondering if the stringers are polyethylene foam instead of polystyrene? I have a chunk of polyethylene intended for an indestructible c/l model aircraft wing - its much tougher than eps, beads don’t break off so easily - heavier and spongier than eps. resin doesn’t stick well to polyethylene, so maybe thats why they used that spongy looking glue. Or is it eps after all?
Any compression dents in the deck, and roughly how much use did it get?
what was the riders impression of the flex - stiff or flexy?
is it a normal or very light board?
did the rider like the board and if so why
are the rails different or reinforced in any different way from the hull and deck surfaces - can you see where the two halves were joined?
thanks,
Mike
Very interesting photos, Carl. The drippy glue looks like “Gorilla Glue” that I’ve used on various projects. It comes out of the bottle looking like thick syrup but foams up like in your photos. Mr J asks some good questions regarding the foam pillars. What is your take on the deck and bottom panels? Any guess on type of foam?
Kinda reminds me of the early 70s WAVE Hollow boards…I was under the impression the Salomon was a foam core.
Looks like a really cheap and ugly version of Paul Jensens boards…
regards,
Håvard
John, for what it’s worth, both in color and breaking surface texture the skins look like Dow extruded polystyrene or XPS.
Wondering if it would be possible for a DIY hollow core like this with PVC foam skins and bulkheads and how that would come out strength and weight wise compared to the S-Core. On the other hand, vacuumbagging pvc foam to EPS will propably be extremly close both strength and weight wise and easy enough to build. IMHO both XPS and EPS snaps without bending all that much, so I don’t see how this core should improve surfboards ‘flexwise’.
regards,
Håvard
truly inspired on down the track from the ol’ aquajet sarf board debacle…
Perhaps this board is a prototype or one off, but it seems to me that the construction is different from what Salomon indicates on their website. This looks like a much cheaper version. I seem to remember the beams within the core NOT being made of foam, and there being more of a stringer down the center (more of a “controlled flex” scheme). But then again, who would know the difference unless the board was broken?
It’s also interesting that we are seeing a broken board here. I understand that nothing is bulletproof, but given the supposed price and the fact that this example does not seem to be as “high tech” as previously thought, I have to ask if we are perhaps not looking at the next Surf Tech.
Again, I will restate my earlier theory that these boards are either going to be very expensive and rare pro models or conversely, mass produced popouts.
Just my 2 cents.
How do they put in the FCS plugs? Why would you even use FCS. Looks like only Red-X could make use of the skin strength. Doesn’t appear to be much core strength.
Wonderful pics. Sheds new light.
Hmm, that board looks a bit different (internally) than the ones I have “seen” (online, video, magazines). It may be an early prototype, or could be a variation in order to manipulate the flex of the board (I seem to recall reading that the low, medium, and high flex Salomon boards are built differently internally, and would therefore all look different in transect, but have the same/similar external appearance).
A while back, Surfing mag (I believe) did an article where they had pro surfers riding three different boards- standard PU, surftech, and Salomon- and giving feedback. I do recall Pancho Sullivan (one of the test-pilots) commenting that the S-core seemed quite strong until it got decimated in a closeout at Teahupoo- something that most would think would break most any board of any material. Could this board be one and the same as the one he broke?
Here is a cartoon-y pic of layers in an S-core from Greg Webber’s website
http://www.webbersurfboards.com/salomon.html
I believe that image will shed some light as to how they install the fin plugs.
The stringers should be laminated, with either fiberglass or carbon fiber…
The stringers could be way thinner too…
The stiffness and flex issue is one of personal preference…To me stiffer boards feel faster, and last longer…
The rail connections look really weak…
The deck and bottom could be thinner, too much foam will dent more easily…
The foam looks like styrofoam, which needs a bit of scuff sanding before laminating to have a strong mechanical bond…
The engineering on these blanks seem to be half done, not a bad start, but crude…How much money did they spend on R&D…???..
You could build your own foam / hollow using the “How To” on my website… www.hollowsurfboards.com
Just use foam instead of wood…
It’d definitely be stronger.
Hey Mr.J-
The foam used for the “stringers” is polystyrene, cut with a hot wire. Though it is a bit denser than what I normally see.
The board is about 2 months old, used aprox 6-10 hours a week.
The deck surface is very hard, and there are a few very slight pressure dents… a little bit more in the tail, nothing like you see normally though.
The word that the user used to describe the board was “lively.” He really liked it alot, he described it as being “one of the best boards he’s ever had.” The board is a couple lbs. lighter than your average shortboard. The rails have a seam, it is towards the bottom of the rail, all the way around the board. There seems to be no additional reinforcement.
JohnMellor - I think that the foam is blue XPS, nothing special. The glue looks like Gorilla glue to me or something of the same type (foaming Urathanes)
Mmanzi- This board was recently shaped by Al Merrick for one of his top riders.
rolliges- I think that the EPS stringers are enlarged towards where the fins are drilled, so that they are sunk into the EPS also… not that it makes much of a difference though.
-Carl