Surftech ULTRAFLEX boards’ utilize a biaxial “Salmon Skin” fiberglass, which is a combination of two uni-directional layers of glass stitched together on a 45˚ angle forming the biaxial grid that makes up our Salmin Skin (those are the lines you see on the deck and rails). Biaxial cloth allows for a greater range of flexibility, while distributing stress loads at 45˚ angles to help prevent buckling or breaking. This means that 100% of the fiberglass is working and more fiberglass can be used while still keeping a soft neutral flex pattern and maximizing durability.
It’s what i use on my last board. Xglass, no crimp fiber like all stitched fiber used now in boat building. Better in all way but bad (strange) looking. Fiber flex use this glass now slx and lot of windsurf builder too.
snowboard companies have gone to biaxial and triaxial glass for years now to get the desired flex patterns along with different core materials...nothing new
Multiaxial stitch fiber are use in all industries, it’s cheaper and stronger than woven fiber, easy to lam big quantities of fiber in one shot and to optimise fiber orientation.
Used biaxial at least 25 years ago. Never broke one … ever. Not even with 1# EPS core. For lightweight longboards, guns and some other boards that get a real beating, the stuff is extremely functional.
Yes louis, this one is resin tint. I don’t want to see stitche of Xglass so i tint white all layers.
Nothing new with stitched fiber. I saw this fiber 15 years later for boat building. Greg speak of this here long time ago. For “industrial” surfboards watercooled use it, slx technologie, fiber flex and now surtech…
“A much easier way to make a board that carries more load, is to add more
glass. Use three layers of S-cloth. The top and bottom should be
normal direction cloth, but the middle cloth should be +45/-45.”
“A much easier way to make a board that carries more load, is to add more
glass. Use three layers of S-cloth. The top and bottom should be
normal direction cloth, but the middle cloth should be +45/-45.”
Well, the opener mentions two unidirectionals, not two flat weaves sandwiching a biax like your selected extract but whatever, the thread from Benjamin actually initially dismissed biax but hey, I agree with surftech, I am on the Biax side of this argument, just my intent was to point out this has been dealt with and pretty much dismissed by the peanut gallery. Now the only caveat with biax is you need to vacume it on because it doesn’t lap worth sh&*t so I would advise a table impregnation like Nelson Factory do and then vacume it on with peelply and a bleeder mat to get the rails. in the end, you should be finalizing the board with fairing compound and paint to protect from UV like the windsurfers are done imho…
On surftech website there is a picture that explain the process, you can see that biaxial is between two layers of woven glass. On picture i post above, the board is not paint, no vacum no peel ply no problem with laps.
Now that Ben has tested biax he pretty much changed his tune. Actual testing does that. The biax I used didn’t require bagging. Just used a lighter foam 1.5#, so that I could put a 2 oz over the biax bottom and a 4 over on the deck. Wasn’t too bad to work with but the cosmetics are not what I would call showroom. I’d use it in a gun for sure but I prefer T-Flex now.
