I killed a 7’6" Stewart doing the same thing. Tried almost all the repairs you have. Both of my feet hit the board at about the same time, I just was slamming my knee into the board on the way up, not leaving the knee there as others have suggested. If you find a permanent fix you are a better man than I. My fix was to make sure I don’t smash my frigging knee into my board anymore. I still ride that board on occasion, but have to repair it everytime. Don’t spend all your time fixing equipment and put some into your body. You are having a flexibility problem more than anything else. Yoga, pilates…strengthen your mid-section, never make another stringer repair.
There are several approaches to a solution, but I’d suggest the shaper isn’t to blame.
Strength is mainly a glassing issue. You’ve been taken in by the industry’s insistence that lighter is better. It’s more maneuverable, but obviously it’s weaker.
You’re putting more weight on a small area than your glass job can withstand. So either get a stronger glass job or modify the way you stand. Four ounce isn’t gonna keep the board from caving in. Extremely light foam isn’t gonna hold up.
Case in point: I was kneeriding for some years, a while back, at Pipeline, Gas Chamber, Velzyland etc. on a 4’11" board with deep knee wells so I wouldn’t bounce out/off. I weighed about 160 to 180 back then. I had to use FOUR layers of then-standard 7.5 ounce glass to keep from denting the small area where most of my weight contacted to board.
Suggest you get together with the glasser about this. If you’re buying off the rack, forget it; no shop will accommodate your need for strength. Why should they? You’ll buy another board sooner.
The ‘metal’ they found was prolly hydrogen, which at certain temperatures and pressures behaves as a metal. It’s something like 1000 atmospheres pressure and close to absolute zero, so it’s not really applicable to standard surfboard technology.
Cutting out the foam and then redoing the whole shebang…that never works. Add cloth appropriately to build it up, then a layer or two over that to tie it all together. that works. It’s a strength issue, so add strength. Add a deck pad over that, 'cos while it’s nice to hope, in the end we always go back to our old vices.
As a kneeboard user and a guy who beats hell out of decks, pads work just fine and pad the aging knees besides. It’s a good thing.
doc…
Mind over matter, your right. At 190lbs, I really don’t see a cure other than a variety of preventions and of course attempting to change the way I stand. My feet both get up at the same time, but as you, I pile my right knee into my board (I’m regular) while my left foot moves into position. It’s a fraction of second kinda thing, but over and over and over again, 10-20 rides a session, 5 days a week for 3 months, my board just can’t handle the punishment. I get my boards custom from Moura surfboards in Del Mar. 4 of 5 have had this problem, and he knows, I’ve showed him. So forward I go. So far, the glue has worked. I’m going to post a photo of the board soon.
Jason
Just came across this thread as I searched for some clues myself.
I’ve recently got my hands on a lovely malcolm campbell ‘bumblebee stub’ - 6oz glass job top n bottom as I tend to be a bit front foot heavy and boards I’ve owned over the years have been prone to a bit of delamination.
I’ve been surfing for around 20 yrs now and defintely don’t drag my knees on pop up so this has not been caused by that.
This board is my pride n joy and I waited nearly 2 yrs to get my hands on her.
Malcolm brought it over to the UK for me on a recent shaping trip.
I’ve only ridden the board 4/5 times now and noticed last night - a crack had appeared up along the stringer, roughly where my front foot goes.
The deck on one side has sunk ever so slightly, probably only about 4-5mm and there are no noticeable dings from a heavy foot or heel but I can see the wooden stringer, side on. (see pics)
The top of the stringer is still glassed over and has not come through.
I am completely mystified and a bit gutted to say the least…
The glassing was done by Moonlight and the board shaped by Malcolm so I’m not sure I can blame the manufacturers but at the same time I’ve hardly surfed it and have been handling it carefully every surf.
Last surf was the first time I’ve actually pushed it a bit and seen what she can do.
now I’m wondering how to go about repairing it.
On the + side it’s a small crack - 4" along the side of the stringer so should be invisible and hopefully won’t damage the tint.
This board is a keeper so appearance isn’t that important, water tight and strength are my main concerns but it’d be a shame to spoil a new board too much.
Should I just inject some resin into the gap and add a patch on top? The thing that concerns me is the problem re-occurring. I’d expect something like this to happen a year down the line… rather that with brand new board.
please see pics attached and let me know what you think.
cheers
I’d plane it down flush, sand the deck on either side of the stringer, then get some fiberglass tape (or just cut strips) and lay down two strips - one narrow one, then one wider one - over the stringer. Wax it up and you’ll never see it.
cheers,
when you say, plane it down flush - are you referring to the actual stringer?
the pics aren’t great as some of what you can see is wax rather than wood.
I should’ve cleaned it out a bit better…
thanks
Quote:
I’d plane it down flush, sand the deck on either side of the stringer, then get some fiberglass tape (or just cut strips) and lay down two strips - one narrow one, then one wider one - over the stringer. Wax it up and you’ll never see it.
Yep…
By planing the stringer down, you’ll get the old glass off, and expose good wood on the stringer. You’ll also want to remove any loose material, and get down to good, structual stuff, including any delaminated glass, frayed or splintered stringer, or crumbled foam.
Yes, it will make the stringer thinner, but you’ll get better strength out of what you have left if you re-create that “I-beam” with new, well bonded glass and good, clean stringer.
You can also slightly dent the foam along both edges of the stringer to create a little trough on either side of the wood that will hold a bead of resin and beef up the I-beam.
Hey swordy that shouldn’t happen after 6 surfs and you know it. Doesn’t matter if it was shaped and glassed by legends. I would get in touch with the shaper with some feedback so maybe the problem can be sorted before another customer has a problem. Maybe a dodgy blank/resin… who knows but I would expect them to be intersted. Were’nt you the one to get the uneven finned Manny? You must be the unluckiest board buyer out there. I wanted a bonzer shaped when Malcolm came over but really like the feel of EPS/Epoxy which wasn’t on offer.
Mark
yup that’s me…
I here what you’re saying and I’m still kind of baffled it by it all, just how a new board can buckle in this way.
still love my manny quad. He’s over here for the U.K fish fest in June I believe, so I might take my board along to show him and see what he has to say as one of the fins, as you correctly remembered was never aligned correctly.
Not sure how a shaper of such repute can make such an error and still ship it out with out checking but there we go.
well, I’ve had some great boards over the yrs, maybe I should just stop buying from the states?!
I mailed malcolm so we’ll see what he can come up with.
I only commented so forcefully because I was appalled to see how much of the stock in the local surfshop are surftechs. Only about 10 % are handmade pu boards from real shapers (ignoring the half dozen or so suspiciously cheap ( chinese import ) boards. That ratio is so wrong. Which got me thinking surftech gained such a hold in the market due to durability and delivery When Clark foam was the norm it was expected to have a dimpled deck after a few surfs.Dead after a season of hard use.Or yellowed.
Foam is so much better now. Even traditional builds are lighter and stronger.There are now good alternatives that make a better more durable board.
I wouldn’t have thought a bonzer would have had a light glass job.
I find whats on offer here in Wales somewhat uninspireing. Again in the local shop there are no quads, no perimeter stringers. no XTR, no twinzers. No hand shaped EPS/Epoxy There aren’t any big name shapers boards even so no al merrick,no lost boards, one old rusty thruster that hasn’t sold from a year or two ago. Surprised that there isn’t a few DHD boards with Fanning leading the ASP. In short there is nothing for the local surfer. The most popular board here is the old Randy French 5’6" surftech fish. 8 locals who surf the same beach here have them. I think a surftech strech quad has be reserved by one of the locals from the shop.
So I can see why you import your boards.
My last 16 boards have been from 2 shapers in Wales. Only one of those is still shaping. Of those boards, if you ignore the shape, I would say that there are too many manufacturing cock ups so another reason I picked up on your unluckyness was because I have had fcs plugs put in wrong, bad resin,pinhole in glass which when poked turned into a big hole under the glass, rails that delaminated, badly installed fin plugs (misaligned towards nose and uneven cant). etc etc. Got tired of finished time promises being broken and a hasty job done as I wait. This is why the buyers go elsewhere. So its great that well renown shapers are coming to the UK and that the Fish fry idea is working (loved to see the Bourton diamond tail quad in the oz photos).
So I’ve stopped getting custom boards but buying second hand boards to try different shapes ( unfortunately variation almost exclusively of the standard thruster). When I find a shaper willing to listen and provide a product tailored for me and in materials or construction method I like then I am more than willing to pay for their time.
You wouldn’t want to share shipping in some Griffin boards would you?
mark
Quote:
bollox! no idea what happened there, my reply didn’t show up alongside your quote? It was along one too… 
In a nutshell - no point importing if you want to make some £ unless you go big. small no’s are fine for getting you and some mates some cheaper boards bu it’s not worth the hassle or expense otherwise.
Si Noble, in st davids used to make some great shapes but he’s closed shop as you prob know.
JP charges £375 for a plain board - far too much imo for a computer shaped stick. I asked him about making me a twinnie with tint and it was nudging £450. I could Al Merrick to make me a board for less than that!
Cornwall is your best bet for something different and a guy in ireland is doing some nice shapes. Friend of mine just bought a new Al Merrick down in Newquay from Northshore but the ain’t cheap! Escape and B&W do some nice shapes as well
Quads seem to be all the rage. My Mandela was one of the first a few yrs back, now they’re everywhere!
some UK shapers doing nice things at the mo:
http://www.blackandwhitesurfcoltd.co.uk/surfboards.php
http://www.escapesurfboards.com/
http://www.northernsoulsurfboards.co.uk/hpage.html
I’d always prefer a custom shaped board but my mate made a good point the other day - at least epoxy’s last a while - they’re not indestructible like a lot of people think. They do ding and the hand shaped ones can have probs but I doubt I’ve ever knacker one from surfing it a handful of times.
I doubt I’ll import again from the U.S - I’d go over and buy some but importing is a hassle. At least that way you can check what you’re getting.
or just get hand shaped epoxy from your local shaper. I dropped my 1st board, only thing it had was just the lam on it (sanding accident, put edges on your orbital pad’s sandpaper; it’ll prevent sand circles. Then I watch glassin 101 and the guy says edges on sandpaper will catch). I get sand circles so I put edges, no sand circles whew! Being cocky, I work fast, and the board is yanked off (I’m using a 4k rpm ginder, but it was set to 7k).
THE RR AND 6 VOLAN BOTTOM DID NOT DENT NOR CRACK, THE BOARD FLEW 4 FEET, WHILE FALLING DOWN 3’ , DOING A HALF TURN LANDED BOTTOM FIRST ON TOP OF A 3 INCH HIGH 1’ DIAMETER CEMENT CYLINDER WITH 1" THICK RETAINING BOLTS STICKING OUT 4" OF IT, JUST SOME TINY SCRATCHES that went away with a swipe of sand paper. I know a poly board would have been speared, skewered.
At this point I’m F@#k poly man. Sorry for the sailors language, my King, but maaaan. GL was money on this one. The Genius and Resinhead was right. Dude, and the blank is polyurethane . . . imagine if it was 2.5 fused uber EPS??
My CI single fin bumps into my mom’s porcelian ceramic vase (vaas :Þ ), get a mad down to the foam crack with same amount of force used to close (not slam) a door. The Vase was ok (or else I’d be in trouble).
This seems to be a Welsh takeover of the thread! We at MITEC would happily host a design / making / laminating event if enough people wrer interested and wanted to contribute.
PM me for a discuss
hi,
aye the welsh are out in full force on this thread 
forgive my ignorance but what is MITEC?
Marine Technology Centre (boatbuilding (and the occasional board when I have time), design, engineering) in Milford Haven. 01437 753356
Some more UK shapers for the welsh guys.
gulfstream are doing some awesome stuff at the moment, great old school longboards, ‘proper’ 50/50 rails and great resin work, in fact nice everything speeddialer copies and other nice boards.
Beachbeat: great shortboards, i think they do genuine bonzers too?
Swordy, I agree the only reason to go to the effort of importing is if the board is unobtainable any way else. Its costly and lots of things can go wrong.I guess that with the shapers coming from abroad there will be an opportunity to get them to shape a board when they are over here although I haven’t seen any word of this yet. Maybe jump the queue for a Pavel ha ha!
I would have loved to have gone down and met Malcolm Campbell and got him to make me a board when he was over here but as I said it was all poly work.
I considered getting a Bulkley round tail quad when he was in France I think, but looks like he was tied into accepting crappy glass through the place he was shaping. No sale.
I like the idea of getting a hand shaped epoxy from a local shaper. Unfortunately the local-local shaper is ended and next nearest is JP and maybe SDF and then its ODD boards. I don’t know what JP is doing in the way of epoxies. Many JP boards your way swordy? None surfed here in South Pembs and none in local surf shop. I’ve had I think six of them in poly but not for a few years now. Even a shaper who is an hour or so drive away never tuned into what I wanted from my surfing. Maybe now I could converse better. Don’t know a lot about SDF and have not yet seen an odd board I liked.
AS to going to Cornwall/ Devon well the 7 hour drive each way is a bit of a bummer although flights are available from Cardiff. I don’t really think that its possible to get a proper custom board made that far away, its more likely to be what I call a made to measure board ( a stock board at a certain length and volume ) unless the shaper is a very enlightened individual. Might as well get something from another country as from Cornwall. I heard that some Escape boards are at Haven Sports so will go and check them out.
Being negative here today but I guess its a luxury to have surfed today in reasonable off shore head high on a second hand s-core which I picked up cheapish. Learned a lot about how to make that board work and how poor some of my technique is.
Rikds, with every different board I ride I fell I get a bit more of the puzzle as to what works and why but ideally I would like to just buy boards from someone who still loves making them and has done the design research already by testing in real conditions ie on waves. Either themselves or through their team riders. Really I just want to express myself on a wave and leave all the hard, messy work to those who like doing it.