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!
**boys i shifted this from the other thread thanks for that midget’’
**
**so we can have a look at some interesting stuff i hope’’
**
I spoke with Andrew and will receive the yellow with an order of foam. I’ll do some testng on the yellow, and perhaps even run a green through the same methodology for comparison’s sake. A bit tedious, but worth the net result. Epoxy seems to be the preferred choice of resin with yellow.
Although there are existing threads stating that the difference in weight between glassing a board with epoxy or PE is insignificant, the gain in strength is not. Epoxy nets a stronger end product, IS lighter, and the equivalent of using epoxy versus polyester with the same glass schedule results in different strength to weight ratios.
In approximate layman’s terms, glassing an epoxy 4 oz. is roughly equal to glassing a PE (100% orthothalic) with 5.7 E glass. This is only an estimate, but all other things remaining the same, probably isn’t terribly far off.
The missing character in this new theatre is…vinylester. Anyone using it is more than welcome to report in…please do!
Anyone wanting to promote their foam on this thread…butt out. Go post your own.
The vinylester I used back in the 80’s was yellowish, then went somewhat clear after curing. I have to research the stuff available now. I can probably get a small amount for testing from Fiberglass Hawaii. The molecular strucure is about halfway between poly and epoxy. The linkage the molecules make with epoxy is almost infintessimal compared to poly.
Entity…we’re not holding ourselves down for cosmetics. Performance wins that battle. Cost is always a factor for production, but keep in mind that we have construction techniques offering many different price points now. Do you want a cheap throwaway or a board with a warranty? And so on.
There was another thread talking about weight and material differences and one guy stated “it doesn’t matter what if the board is made out of PU or EPS or whatever…the weight is the weight…the water doesn’t know if it’s PU or EPS”.
I’m not buying that one ioda. At least to say, maybe “the water doesn’t know it” but to imply that the weight is the weight with no siginifcant difference is ridiculous. An EPS board of the exact same weight as a PU will feel noticeably lighter. Why? Because the weight is concentrated in the skin. That alone constitutes a completely different feel of ride for the adept surfer. A truly sensitive surfer could even feel the difference between Clark type TDI density through the blank and uniform celled MDI. The yellow we are exploring may offer the best of both worlds. Inherent flex properties are significantly different as well, lending to the overall individual experiences.
That’s not to say that this can’t be done in a variety of ways…of course they can. We can manipulate things in any variety of ways. For example, I might glass a yellow with single 4 oz E glass deck but add a 1/3 Warp glass deck patch then compare that with one done the same way except all in E glass. In theory, the pure E glass tail should flex more. If the rocker was the same we could note the differences. Or perhaps we put slighly less tail rocker in the E glass version, and more rocker in the Warp version…or apply this logic to placing the configs on the bottom that experiences tension vs compression…and so on.
There are endless possibilities at our disposal. This becomes significant when applied to a pro riding it.
Andrew and Marty connected today…10 blues and greens and the yellow test blank. Keep me posted on your end in OZ. Can’t wait to play with this one but have a stack to do b4 I get to it. There’s a heat spell on right now (100 degrees+), so I’ve changed to “vamp” hours and I’m glassing midnight to dawn. Don’t get me in the sun, I’ll vaporize!
Sleep all day, party all night??? Forget the coffee, just gimmee some blood! :[
Daren…right on, I welcome you to the club practicing “Lean Manufacturing”. I do 100% of my boards as well as the sweeping and hair pulling out…just joking on the last one. Experience has kept me with a full head…no need for Rogaine.
Huie is the man for the vac bag deck skin application, although these guys keep interesting me with what is possible. I’ve got some ideas up my sleeve that I’m keeping mum about for the moment.
The popular ‘low tech’ method to date has been to shape out then go with epoxy and S glass. I’ve got a yellow that SB America was so good to let me play with with my order of blues and greens, and I haven’t had time to get to it yet, so I’m at the same status as you.
The blues and greens I’ve shaped this week are noticeably more shaper friendly than the stuff I shaped a good while back. Weights feel good on those for their densities and I suspect they are going to glass out lighter than other stuff. The stringer glue ups were excellent, and the custom rockers I asked for were spot on.
My only input on the deck skin direction would be that if I start doing skins, I will drop the stringer out. If I go with sandwich skins T+B, then there isn’t any need for the stringer because that method equates a stringer.
The other possiblity is to go glue line or colored foam strip) for easy planshape referencing and glass with Warp glass to provide stringer like integrity. The flex pattern will no doubt be different than center I Beam but that might even be preferable? BTW, prety sure they make S2 glass in Warp…
So noted…the yellow I have beckons to me but the paying customer comes first. The blues I received shaped out well, a few minor holes from extensive restructuring of the blank demanding I cut deeper into the core. Not a big deal, the worst hole was perhaps 1/3 the diameter of a No. 2 Pencil. Easily filled, painted and on to glassing. Blank weight feels light. ‘News at 11’.
