after his leg… what do you think gave first
So this Board is shaped from a Burford PU heavy… with 20mm of stringer ply… then vacumed 1.5 mm bending plu on each side with one layer of 4 oz underneath… then pawlonia rails… then 1 x 4oz and 1 x 6 oz hand lammed with wide laps each side…
im thinking if it wasnt so strong he would not have smashed his leg so bad… but then it may not have lasted the plus 5 years surfing there at shipsterns and pedra all the time either…
Easy answer: THE WAVE.
Fatigue stress, to much stiffness localized.For me a good quality 2lb EPS blank with multiple thin stringers, separate by 1 1/2 or 2 inch would be far better in this case.
Lemat, that is the obvious answer to a general question. I asked what broke first meaning what have way firstly
I don’t Dave but i do know my sphincter would fail pretty quick if I was anywhere remotely near that wave!
Sorry dave, feel like I’m cheating here but came across this in the comment on swellnet when looking for a video of the wipeout:
"Just got off the phone to James. Let’s start with the injury list:
Broken leg
Partial ligament tears
Fractured tibia
What he thinks happened to the board is this. There was a wave five minutes earlier that he got towed into and at the last minute pulled back on. I’ve seen it on video and it’s like The Right on steroids(!), if he committed to that wave the injury list would be more serious reading. Anyway, he pulled off the back but the next wave mowed through and took his board. They hopped on the ski and found his board at the end of the reef, then motored back out to the takeoff. The wave in the video came through almost straight away.
From the get go he said his board didn’t feel right. “It usually sticks to the face, but it was bouncing where it shouldn’t have been.”
He believes it was creased or copped some sort of damage that compromised its strength. That was why it was flexing and bouncing, and why he come a’gutser on a small piece of chop.
The downside? Three months out of the water during the prime swell season."
shits gonna breakk . i have no problem with that… just what and where in what order… and he ended up 7 months out… im thinking the timber/glass delammed from the foam first… but i would like some input from lemat and other technitians.
Hey Dave,
Good to see you here. Got any other pictures of the broken board?
Any autopsy observations?
no mate, sorry thats it…
Its interesting that it broke almost on a straight line…no delamination from the deck or bottom. Looks more like the catastrophic falure when surftechs break. ie, it only bends a little bit then blows up. But i see about 1 inch of plywood stringer and a box construction of deck skin and outer rail…It’s as strong as an I beam. So what broke first? I’m thinking it went all at once. The only thing stronger would have been some kind of metal rails and skin.
Maybe make my patented steel reinforced hollow concrete surfboard. Hes lucky to be alive…forget about the surfboard.
Probably foam first Dave, only because the foam is usually the weakest element.
Not sure why you only lam under wood with 4oz for a tow board?
I go double 6 oz of cloth nicely saturate epoxy resin under the wood with the vacuum, Then 6 oz hand lam for an 11-12 lb final weight board and more glass for heavier boards. this is for a 5’8"-6’ x 16" x 2". My current board is 2lb eps core(1/8" corcell stringer for no strength but courtesy for shaper) with 1" balsa rails, 1/8" balsa skins, It coud be used as a car ramp and not break. Unfortunately the wave your frined got hurt in was more like a car lot. More glass under the wood with inital pull would be the only thing I would change. Nice pics, scary wave.
I’m pretty sure it was gravity that broke the board. jk
Don’t really understand, my english is so poor. Compressed skin buckle, lift from foam and break, over loading stringer and rails that break by shear then last skin break. For me from the picture it start at bottom.
Compressed skin buckle, lift from foam and break,
im thinking the timber/glass delammed from the foam first
i would agree - skin seperating from core first - then it has no chance…
Can some one post a link to video of that day, please???
no video… its has been removed from the web and sold to be used in the remake of pointbreak…
G’day Dave, how’s things in Indo ?..Ive only done a few tow boards over the years , so I’m no authority…but I think the problem is the decision to use foam as a core in the first place ?..balsa has proved a go to material , and if you need to up the longitudinal strength from there , vertical stringers (or vertical carbon ?) should achieve that…as far as the personal injuries go , these hellmen roll the dice…much respect for what they are doing !
