Texalium Lookalike

While I usually only build my boards for personnal consumption, recently a close friend who’s currently down on her luck asked me to shape her a new board. We’ve worked out the details for the shape, but it’s the final appearance that’s giving me problems.

She saw a picture of a board with Texalium and asked me if I could do that. She asked if I could use the blue Tex on the bottom & the silver on the top. Anybody here price that stuff out lately? It’s really expensive and I  told her so.

I’m hoping somebody out there has some ideas for using alternate materials (i.e. cheaper materials) to imitate the Tex. Or maybe some type of graphic method to imitate it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Have you tried searching the archives for “silver surfboard”? Seems to me there was a thread awhile back. Maybe silver (paint?) and blue tint?

I would get it digitally printed on cloth and glass it in.

Lot’s of good companies offer this service… If you do a google/swaylocks search you should come up with a bunch.

IIRC, I even started a thread a while back asking about this and got a ton of great answers.

if you change your mind and want to use texalium you would want to vac bag the material. it has a 5mm cardboard like feel to it.  I would not invest in a hand layed texalium surfboard.

 


Hi, I tried the alloy coated basalt once, it is much cheaper, but i shifted the weave when using the squeegee.

Looked more like a dead fish than a silver surfer.

Are there similar problems with the texalium?

Wonderful board bb30!

Hey guys - Thanks for responding. That’s what’s great about swaylocks -everybody sharing their knowledge & experience.

Huck - I’ll try doing a google search on silver surfboard. Before writing this thread, I did a google search of Texalium. Great idea for alternate wording.

ChrisP - Do you happen to remember the name of your thread? When I did my google search, I didn’t see yours previously.

BillB- Fantastic looking board!  I better not show her this picture or it might get real expensive for me. I’m not a very good hand laminator and the boards all came out pretty heavy, so I vac bag all my laminations now(plus I dig the technology and have built a couple of compsands).

JSPR- I’ll check out that alternate material to see if I can find it.

http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/has-anyone-worked-any-digital-print-companies

 

It always occurs that when you offer to do a board for free or on the cheap;  They want the most exspensive materials and all the “bells And whistles”.  So your not getting anything whatsoever out of this deal???   

Lowell - Let’s just say I have a soft spot in my heart for her. She’s a really good person.