Sourcing Guide

General Discussion
1

I don’t know if it’s ever been tried here before but…

it seems like there’s enough of us out here all over the world accessing raw materials and supplies from a wide variety of places to build an internet based local/regional/internet surfboard building sourcing resource guide.

called verticals or trade communities it seems we should be able to work with each other to find the best prices on raw goods either locally or via the net. Local hui s can also be established to purchase in bulk in order to get btter prices like folks have been doing with EPS blocks.

things like 233 tape, fins, glass, wood, tools etc etc there’s no end to the amount of help we all could be to each other in finding the best deal on raw materials.

In a time where the rising price of oil will slowly creep into every aspect of this petrochemical dependant industry seems only logical that we start thinking ahead and call out when ever we find a place that has the best price on the basic things we need to have to make these objects.

But I guess that would only work if we are truly a community versus a lose knit group of cut throat competitors trying to make a hobby into a business to live off of comfortably… Its the call of the wild so lets see who’s willing to get it started although I know many have here already…

Perhaps the moderators can create a new discussion section called “Sourcing” or something similar and have individual threads dedicated to specific subtopics like you’s see on FoamEZ or FiberglassSupply or the Shapers Resource Australian Site. Threads like wood, glassing, shaping, vacuuming, epoxy, tools etc etc…

Just an idea I got listening to the discussions going between Schwuz, Benny1, Chip, Llibel, Manoa, UncleD and Carvenalu. The options and places to get stuff at a good reasonable price are endless. I learned from CMP that you have to really spend the time to find all the right places to get your raw material at the best prices or you’re really spending more than you need to.

No sense why we can’t work as a community to get there even if we don’t use some form of combined purchasing power to do it. But I can understand why folks in this industry would not want to share trade sourcing secrets as well…

Maybe something for you folks to discuss over a beer at Keith’s shindig which I believe is a good start to this way of thinking…

The great equalizer of power in the world is information

2

hi bernie ,

VERY timely , again , mate !

I was having this very conversation on the phone with ben ['sirw… ’ , etc] yesterday !

I suggested photo copying [scanning] price lists and posting them to him …to compare , in our case , the price and materials availability differences between us [in west oz and hawaii]

I’m keen , for sure !

 cheers 



   ben

…I just wonder if there are copyright / “privacy” / whatever issues that I would be breaching doing this . I would definately check with my surf supplies guy here …if he would prefer me not to do that , I will certainly respect that decision !

3

Happy to help out.

Not sure how much help it’ll be.

I have yet to stumble across someone on the internet,

who comes from the same state as me,

and is interested in making surfboards.

:frowning:

4

hi doug !

…that is where this would be good , though , because we would be able to hopefully compare prices between the states to see if any of us are being ripped off.

Obviously the pro guys on the goldy and elsewhere will be getting better deals [and they SHOULD , to !] than we who just 'dabble ’ and ‘tinker’

maybe Bernie ,

if you compile an item by item list , and we can go through each thing one by one .

I hope at least ONE person from every country represented here [and there are MANY , now ! on this world wide web forum] will be able to give some input …

cheers !

ben

[thinking back , I DID do a thread on this , asking to compare prices…beats me when , and what it was called , though , of course]

5

Great idea. Don’t forget (I’m sure you won’t) that shipping costs are a huge part of delivered cost and need to be part of the basic concept, not an afterthought. I think the biggest ongoing effort would be maintenance. Vendors change their products, pricing, and policies constantly (ntm go belly up). Motivating paid employees to do that sort of drudge work is difficult enough, a commitment from several volunteers to take turns making those changes in a coop effort would be essential. Otherwise you risk investing time in creating a tool that becomes gradually less and less useful. IMO the best way to proceed would be to find some Open Source program that supports this kind of supplier tracking. Even if it isn’t feasible to have the program itself hosted on-line, several interested members could run it off-line, share data, and post the resulting reports. If there is interest and I find some time to browse through SourceForge, I’ll see if I can’t come up with some candidate programs.

-Samaim

6

Sounds Like a great idea oneula.

I am in Canada and it is impossible to get a lot of the stuff here, so I end up paying shipping/exchange/duty costs. Now, there is no real way to avoid that, but if I had cheaper sources to begin with…

Good sources for some of the consumables could save a lot of moneyin the long run.

One of the things that I am trying to source now as well, is some of the tools… I listened to Rusty’s interview on ‘In the Line Up’ and am trying to figure out how to find the Noritake microdot sandpaper and the Polonet(sp?) sanding screen( up to 500 grit). Never mind the expense of a planer and sanding drum for it…

7

Howzit oneula, Ted at F.H. does this a lot so he can try to keep prices down. He also does a lot of testing of products to make sure the quality is good enough for F.H. to sell. Not sure if he would be of any help since we would be competing with F.H…Aloha,Kokua

8

What I’m interested is like finding

cheap rolls of 1" 233 3M greentape for under a $1.00

cheap commercial grade GAST/Reichle vacuum pumps under $100

or cheap low temperature(120 degree) epoxy prepreg

or cheap peel ply/perf release or heavy duty poly vacuum bags like Bert and Silly use.

or cheap carbon fiber or texalium

or cheap PU Glue or Roo Glue or 3M Styro spray adhesive

or cheap balsa

(kokua)

Ted and Fiberglass Hawaii will always be a starting point here but I bet they are a middle man for alot of these products that could be acquired cheaper from the regional distributor supplying all the stores in Hawaii. There’s an industrial distributor for alot of the incidentals outside of resin, glass and foam blanks that sell the items cheaper to guys like Ted, Costco, Lowes, Homedepot etc etc. They usually are in Halawa Valley ,Mapunapuna or Sand Island. As far as Hawaii, the closer you can pick things up at the container the cheaper it’ll be. Stor floor space always adds major dollars to the cost of something especially here…

folks in the various industries don’t pay RAC prices they pay wholesale or better so there’s much more info out there if we dig. Even local places will ship if the order is big enough.

I guess to get things started I’ll with my short lost of browser favorites I scour for my sourcing deals outside of ebay.

EPS Shaping Tools

http://www.hotwirefoamfactory.com/…mer/home.php?cat=103

http://www.demandproducts.com/foamcut.html

http://www.demandproducts.com/rasps.html

http://webtronics.stores.yahoo.net/ensavat.html

Basic Wood

http://www.northamply.com/Wigglewood.asp

http://www.portagemills.com

http://www.oakwoodveneer.com/

http://www.teragren.com/tera_panels/veneer.asp

http://www.joewoodworker.com/…921d5e33049de37541dd

http://www.paulowniawood.com/vsbalsa.htm

http://www.stewmac.com/…es/Bending_Iron.html

Balsa Strips

http://www.solarbo.com/…fo/info.php?InfoID=3

http://www.lonestar-models.com/

Vacuum Bagging Stuff

http://www.uline.com/Group_43.asp

http://www.avtcomposites.com/vacuum.php3

http://www.vacupress.com/products.htm

http://www.joewoodworker.com/…921d5e33049de37541dd

http://www.roarockit.com/rc_wood.php

http://www.fiberglasssupply.com/…/vacuum_bagging.html

Glass/Core Materials/Resins

http://www.noahsboatbuilding.com/

http://resinresearch.net/index.html

http://www.graphitemaster.net/

http://www.fibreglast.com/

http://www.acp-composites.com/acp-cat.htm

http://www.flyingfoam.com/foamsheet.html

http://www.foambymail.com/Polyethylene.html

http://www.sudaglass.com/index.html

http://www.cstsales.com/products.html

http://www.thayercraft.com/

Surfboard Related

http://www.foamez.com/

http://www.shapers.com.au/index.htm

http://www.oceanfoam.com.au/

http://www.surfboardkits.com/

http://www.finalley.us/

http://foam.akubird.com/

There’s got to be a better way than this though

9

This pump might be what you’re looking for, it sounds like it’s a Reichle Thomas, pulls 20" $80. Maybe not what you’re looking for since it’s surplus, but helpful?

http://www.sciplus.com/singleItem.cfm?terms=12256&cartLogFrom=Search

10

first start by getting a 1)business tax certificate, then get yourself a 2)resale permit and then a 3)federal tax id number, 4)commercial insurance, and a 5)industrial zoned facilty then you can get things at wholesale pricing at least the first 3 or 4. but I know this is not what your looking for. Big companies are not looking to do business with somebody who just buying a case of this and a case of that they want to sell you a pallet of this and a pallet of that. I have called different cloth companies(hexcell, jps, bfg, etc) and to even get an account with them you need to spend a minimum of 100k per year in cloth purchases thats a few rolls.

11

I would be very interested in finding a good source of eps foam in various densities in my area, 1 lb. block foam especially.

I think it would be cool if it was in folders by region so you could go through a menu system and find materials in your area like Country>Region>State/prov. and then maybe a separate folder for internet retailers.

Mostly I do ding repair, and a lot of it. But here goes

tongue depressors, resin, cloth, razor blades, syringes - fiberglass supply

gloves, paint brushes, sandpaper - home depot

That is absolutely no help I’m sure, but it’s been working for me. I’m close enough to FGS that I just make bi monthly trips to pick up supplies, or a blank if I want to do a board, so shipping is not an issue.

12

Howzit oneula,If you can find 233 tape for a dollar that would be insane and I would be interested in the source, especially since it runs over $3 a roll from FH. They do have another brand of tape that works well with chemicals and it is cheaper than 233 but FH only carries it in 3/4" rolls. I’ve used it and find it works really good but would like to get it in 1" wide rolls. I use both 233 green and beige since I like the fact that the beige is a little thicker. I use the green for taping off airbrush work since it will stretch for taping off curves.Aloha,Kokua

13

I wonder if there were any companies that would offer a small price break to swaylock’s members? Everybody and their mom would be signing up then, so the companies could only offer it to members that have been a member for a certain lenght of time. Or if in the artwork, a small logo for their company. Maybe a deal could be made somewhere.

14

Aloha KokuaAZ…

anyway here’s an example…

It comes out ot $2.40 for a case of 48 3/4" rolls of 233+

http://www.autotoolmart.com/cgi-bin/webc.cgi/st_prod.html?p_prodid=9347&p_catid=48

Seems like there’s got to be better deals out there the more you scour the web or in areas outside of surfboard building.

In the case above it’s an Autobody Painting supplier that’s selling the tape. I predict the lowest prices will be found outside of the industries we are most familiar with…

if you figure at the lowest end it’s 15%-30% markup(supermarkets like foodland run the lowest at 10%) it’ll give you an idea of what the potential is. Even at 15% the cost of the tape near $2.00 a roll.

CMP is the guy who really made me think about spending the effort ot get the lowest possible costs on your raw materials as he orders his stuff from liquidation lots or way across the country etc etc and buys in bulk to keep his cost down to an absolute minimum…

Makes alot of sense

but I bet most of us just go for convenience.

15

Thought I’d bring this one back up, I wish it would’ve materialized (no pun) better. Mainly interested in people’s sources for cedar and paulownia in compsand thicknesses here in the states. Are people mostly buying thicker and milling their own?

16

Might add to that list

balsausa.com

They have the best prices I’ve found for balsa sheets.

and uscomposites.com for cloth. They have best prices I’ve found on s-glass (of course when it comes I always wonder, “How do I really know if they’ve sent me e-glass or s-glass?”

17

For the fin makers out there. This place is a little pricey, but the only place I’ve ever seen G10 in colors

G10 colors

Regular G10

G10 G11 whatever it takes

18

EPS foam in USA

if you are hotwiring from a block you can go with www.univfoam.com ask for Anne McPherson. 410-825-8300

minimum order is $250, but you can have them cut it into a couple of blocks (i had them give me two blocks 12inches wide so I could do my stringer glue ups on factory edge)

19

Getting together sufficient orders to qualify for a bulk purchase is going to be a hassle on a lot of levels, not the least of which is the main guy to place the order, make the payment, then store whatever-it-is until the individuals come pick it up.

I’ve tried this on a couple occasions, long ago. Sadly, I got ripped off, but that’s long in the past.

For a while I was building enough boards to get 5-gallon cans of UV lam resin, but the last couple gallons went off in the can when things slowed down. No loss; if I used three of the five gallons I was ahead of purchasing by the gallon as I otherwise would have.

I get my resin from a Sways member who does LOTS of glassing and always has a drum on hand. He gets a $5 markup per gallon; I get a $10 discount, which works well for both of us. Not that he needs to sell me resin, but we are both ahead on time-sensitive material this way.

As for glass I buy 125-yard rolls on a friend’s GET license and it’s about half price versus the per-yard retail cost. But you have to be listed as authorized to use that GET.

“Hui” buying works in various ways.

20

Foam fins and fiberglass in Ventura sells small amounts of Resin Research epoxy cheaper than buying direct. He pumps from 50 gal. drums. You might want to add him to the surf related.

http://web.mac.com/scott_larese/Foam_Fins_and_Fiberglass/Foam-Fins-and-Fiberglass.html