Just wondering if anyone has tried or heard of Sonic Foam. They are east coast, Mass. I believe. I checked out the website and their blanks looked interesting. They say their polyurethane is TDI free, without any loss of quality. I am looking to create eco friendly poly boards, and am wondering if this will work. Any help? Thanks
If they are TDI (Toulene Di Isocynate) free, they are most likely MDI (Methyl Phenyl Di Isocynate). That is unless they are EPS (Expandable PolyStyrene aka “styrofoam”, a trade name created by Dow Chemical).
Every foam blank listed above has some detriment to the environment. Trying to be green while making surfboards is admirable but at this point a complete pipedream. That is unless you find a fallen tree, shape it by hand and varnish it with water base shellac or varnish that contains no VOC’s (Volatile Organic Compounds).
I think you get my point.
I think I just overlooked the fact that maybe they thought they had found something new! I didn’t even think about the fact that it was MDI. I sent them an email (there is no phone# on their site) so I am waiting to see what the story is. I will post when I find out. Thanks for calling it to my attention(MDI).
There quite a few MDI blank makers out there. Ice Nine’s Cane base foam, Homeblown Foam (which is part of “TheEden Project” , a large Britain based green movement, and numerous others if you research around. The fact is, there are many new blank manufacturers that sprang up since the closing of Clark Foam. Some are good, some bad, and ultimately far too many to survive in the current economy…yeah, just like too many surfboard manufacturers.
The industry needs another blank manufacturer like they need a hole in the head.
This will all shake out sooner or later as a “correction” is inevitble.
I know nothing of this particular company, But I have used both MDI and TDI blanks for PU boards,
I think the MDI blanks end up heavier than TDI and you cant use them if they are very fresh.
TDI gets softer the further into it you cut, Thus when I machine a board, I cut the deck first, about 5mm or less, of the deck, the rest of the meat is cut from the bottom,
MDI seems to stay the same density thoughout the whole blank.
Thus, why i think it ends up heavier.
MDI also seems to soak in more resin, I guess that makes it stronger, but again , heavier.
MDI blank companies are nicer to visit, they dont smell, if they dont use resin to glue up that is,
Plus they get to inject thier molds, thus less waste and more control.
And I find MDI are cheaper, about 30$ for a 6’6 fish blank.
I could be wrong here, only my opinions, factories may differ…
…your appreciations are ok
I had tested a lot the MDI foam
I went more than one time to the Elova factory in Argentina
I checked the process, etc
I remember a very old thread that I posted about that MDI is not good for shortboards
but surprisingly good for some longboards designs
due to that spongy effect
I have been very good feedback with longboards
-also, is not possible to obtain superb quality like couple of TDI s foam in the market
yep midgets yellow do it up with the latest tech
**what more do you need’’
**
…hello Huie,
can you elaborate a bit more?
thanks
this from midgets web
Yellow Foam 1998 (Elektrafoam) - 1.98 lb cu ft (approx) - Has developed
substantially since 2002. Cell size is down and compression strength is
up. As of 2006 Surfblanks has been making increasing numbers of blanks
from this foam. Blanks made from this foam are always glued with yellow
glue for identification purposes. In 2007, formulation changes made
Yellow Foam easier to produce.
midget often reads these threads i belive he should be able to tell you if surfblanks u s a.
are doing same
**
**
Sorry this took so long Huie
Andrew at SBUSA has been making Green Foam as his shortboard standard with Yellow as his Team foam.
In Australia Blue is our standard with Green as Team. We sell Yellows but shapers don’t think about them as we are so much lighter than our competitors to begin with (fact - not bragging).
Max and Chad in Durban are in a similar situation as SB Australia – the other makers are heavy – so Blue and Green Foam are way lighter on average.
Fernando at SB Brazil is the innovator. He has developed his mixing to such a degree that his Yellow Foam has great compression strength relative to weight. Fernando has relabelled his Yellow as Premium – glues it with a 1mm stringer and blue glue – flex is nice.
I have machined this blank on my Miki APS3000 and it is fine celled and good at the extremities. Soon as I did – we got to work changing this and that in the foam room - we are now getting close to Fernando.
Fernando only supplies his good customers with Premium – keeps it special.
In Australia we found that when Yellow Foam was made readily available it was taken for granted and the novelty of it’s lightness fell away.
All four Surfblanks’ makers encourage the use of Yellow Foam as a substitute for EPS and XPS to avoid the hassles of those two products.
Glass Surfblanks Yellow Foam light and it will crap out fast – as you would expect – everyday surfers usually get sick of the board, before it dies.
Use epoxy or polyester – increase cloth content in the right places – throw a wood skin on - it will last - surf it for years and pass it on when the fun’s gone!
MF
Use epoxy or polyester – increase cloth content in the right places –
throw a wood skin on - it will last - surf it for years and pass it on
when the fun’s gone!
thats the point i was trying to make another good core for those that want to work outside the square
**thanks for that midget’’
**
Thanks to all for the good info!
Midget…great update. Thanks for the new news!
P.S.
Hi Huie!
So now that you have that update, what's up? You gonna use some of the best foam available or just pay homage to Midget with the "that's cool bro" stuff o' what? Seriously; I have heard your opinion of the best foam you have never used in previous posts and threads, so why not actually shape a blank out of the yellow or green Surfblanks America, glass it with epoxy and give this site an honest opinion without all the "bloviating". Do it and I'll personally deliver a Clark to your shop, so that you can remember how things used to be. Lowel
Mean't that post for "yours truly" DS. Sorry for any misinterpretation.
Welcome to the cheapest customers on the planet. The biggest problem that people have when buying a surfboard or blank? They have to spend money on it. Should be your privilege to give it away for free you know as you get to enjoy the “cool factor” of making surfboards.
whats that all about
Uh yeah…there are some frazzled nerves going here or a “too strong coffee jag”? I think McDing was responding to Plante26 (or whatever) who started this thread.
I will throw my two cents into this…like I said up further in this post, there is a lot of foam out there and you can run ragged trying to reinvent the wheel or at leaset explore enough of it to decide what you want to use. In other threads I have made it very clear that I used Ice Nine blanks, some of which were given to me and in turn I provided them with feedback…it was a fair deal. In the end, Cane didn’t pan out the way some of us hoped it would. OTOH, Mowses shaped fantastic and netted a very strong end result. The cells were smaller and the glassd out weight was excellent. After I reported that Andrew from Surfblanks contacted me and invited me to try the new SB he had been working oon with similar properties. I like both SB and Ice NIne…great attitudes.
I made mention that both Surfblanks & U.S. Blanks have very extensive offerings in their catalogs. They also have good distribution. If you have good foam and these two key elemnts (distribution & variety) you have the market IF you don’t price yourself out of existence. Ice NIne did not have the blank variety available that is so important to handshapers.
Does that matter when 80 or 90% of the industry is machining? Probably not. But good handshapers still exist (although, sadly, we are dying off), and the ability to restructure foam is rapidly becoming a dying art. The new guys are very adept with computer software and creating new things, and Swaylockians have demonstrated how easy it is to knock off a template outline as illustrated in the “Lost Rocket” thread. On a Surfline thread, there are guys debating whether Al Merrick is even needed at Burton. Some maintain that it is all marketing, while others debate that great surfers come and go (yes even Slater) while the shaper remains. Some go on to state Slater could take over or one of the other multitude of shapers that have shaped C.I.'s for years behind the scenes. It’s an interesting debate, but I find it highly unlikely that a pro surfer or some computer geek will rival the record of any of the top surfboard shaper designers that have spent decades within the discipline…key word: discipline.
At the end of the day, ‘one-offs’ are something designers and hobbyists are doing along with a dwindling number of custom shapers. To me this is too bad, in that the ability to remove the bottleneck that once existed with handshaping each board has resulted in contributing to massive and unprecedented oversupply. The supply vastly exceeds the demand due to both domestic and foreign production, and unfortunately superior foam formulations will exacerbate the problem.Oversupply impacts price, which benefits the consumer on a tight budget, but reduces the net profit that surfboard craftsmen can realize for their effort. The natural tendency is too attempt to increase income through doing more units aka capturing market share. This is the name of the game whether you are a surfboard builder or a foam blank manufacturer.
My opinion is that there are too many blank manufacturers and there are too many surfboard manufacturers. I do not see how the current conditions can remain static. In other words, people will fall along the wayside…and to sound unkind, I wish it would happen sooner than later so we can find some equilibrium and move on down the road with something that resembles an inkling of a given.
Great products evolve from products that offer the manufacturer an incentive. My personal growth in manufacturing surfboards reflected this from the profit I chose to plow back into sailboard (and subsequently, surfboard) R&D and production. When the incentive is removed or diminished, the product ultimately suffers. I predict that if we stay on the current path we are on, a period of stgnation will result.
The irony could be that the foam core improves, the boards are reproduced quicker than ever and delivered to market, prompting the media to declare “the surfboard is better than it has ever been before” yet in the design aspect there exists a paradox. Is the modern day surfboard being homogenized to the point of sterility? Safe to drink, but do you like the taste? Pros swear by it, you sink by it…but the logos and marketng is sooo bitchen.
There is no blame here, it is where we currently are, and it will be interesting to see where we are in a few years down the road.
The age of uncertainty may be exciting to a few, but for most trying to glean a livng from it, it sucks…
“What’s that mushroom cloud outside our window momma”?
“Dont worry honey, everything will be fine”!
DS--------I was having some fun at your exspence. I simply mean't that I have heard your opinion of Surfblanks etc. in past threads, but never heard you say you have shaped one. Sounds like maybe you already have and if so why not give this forum the kind of first hand critique you did in another thread on Moses/Ice-nine? Like I said above yellow or green glassed with epoxy. I've heard alot of guys talking about SB's yellow glassed with epoxy and the comparisons between it and an EPS blank of the same shape.
You seem to have a very bad attitude of late on anything to do with the business of surfboard construction, something to do with abyss web site being closed until further notice?why dont you just start a “Dean Bonkovich abyss surfboards-the real story” thread and vent it all on there, that way ppl wanting to be a part of what you are going through can be and others who dont dont have to be.