Quick question. Has anybody hand laminated with either of the items below? They both look pretty cool and I don’t have a vac set up, so I was considering hand lam with low viscosity epoxy. I would use it over 2lb eps for a few paipo’s that I’m about to start. Any help or tips are appreciated. And is it worth it, or am I better off with S cloth??
Texallium aluminized glass fabric 9oz/sq yard or Black Carbon Fiber and yellow kevlar 5.7 oz/sq yd
i have used the carbon kevlar in a few hand lams and under vac. results are much lighter under vac, but works well both ways.
Feral Dave gave a great tip about using hairspray before you cut the fabric. It helps to keep the twill from fraying and becoming a mess and a hazard. Let it set for then cut with sharp scissors.
It shows no signs of denting at all. I sandwiched it between glass layers for tail patches. It will leave a ridge due to thickness if you do not go full length.
Don’t sand into it. Good luck! post results!
The texallium is a very cool fabric but it is very difficult to work with. I would suggest ordering a small amount and working with that to see if it can do what you’re looking for it to do. As far as saturating it, that depends on the epoxy that you are using as well as the area you are covering and your familiarity with hand laminating. If possible, lay your fabric, cut it, roll it back, and do a cheater coat underneath and laminate as usual. The carbon kevlar is awesome when used properly. Super strong, durable and looks great. Pico has some great tips on that. Good luck and let us know if we can help you out. If you buy four yards or more the price continues to drop on this 7.6 oz fabric. We also stock more varieties at our Honolulu location which we ship from and it’s very affordable.
Texallium doesn’t offer any improved strength, it’s mainly decorative. Very difficult to lap, so it’s mostly used as an inlay. If you’re going to use it with an EPS core, take heed that it will get really hot in the sun.
I've done 3, 9' boards with the carbon kevlar hybrid cloth. I'm not particularly skilled at glassing whole boards. You should avoid using that material, it is a major bear to finish, it holds a lot of resin, weave fill coats go on endlessly because the weave is pronounced and wants even more resin to fill the weave, when finish sanding you will hit the kevlar and it turns to a dry tuft of unsandable fuzz, you nead to slice/shave it off or add more resin to harden it to then try sanding it off again and again. A major pain and toxic. And the kevlar doesn't seem to do much in the way adding strength or damage resistance properties like you're expecting. Use straight carbon for the application you're thinking the hybrid would be good, much easier with a better result., less expensive also.
Great tips and advice, thanks. Mainly I am looking more for strength than anything else, so texallium doesn’t sound overly useful.
Pico, thanks for the tips
Fiberglasshi, I will check out the link later today.
Gtfd, thanks for the tips. What weight did you use and did you sandwich it?
Another thought… So pre glass fcs fusion don’t sound like a good idea, right? That kind of defeats the purpose some for me as these will be used in pretty shallow water and I was hoping that the carbon would protect the fin plugs
It depends on the type of carbon you’re using. If you’re going with a twill or plain weave over the boxes then it will for sure be more work to open that area up. If you’re doing a carbon/kevlar fabric then I wouldn’t even suggest it. There are some guys that use the “Tecno” carbon, carbon tape or unidirection over the fin boxes/plugs only and it looks pretty cool. Or, you could always glass the board, hot coat it and then cut in your plugs and lay fiberglass over the plugs but then you loose out on the carbon reinforcement. Lots of options, just depends on how technical you want to get.
On one other board we covered carbon with glass, I don't remember the glass weight. That whole board got heavy in building for many reasons. Also, dings showed as glass shatters in the glass covering, we were not happy with glass covering. A single layer of carbon is mucho strong for board breakage but not that great for ding prevention, same with the hybrid, double layer starts getting more ding resistant on the rails. If you must fool with hybrid cloth, do it small scale. For carbon type weaves, i've used straight weave, least expensive, every time, works great. When you've got a black carbon board, you're done stopping to chat with friends on the beach, no setting the board off to side as you change clothes, you're constantly thinking heat and sun exposure, a real hassle. Next carbon board i take to Mex. is getting a coat of $1.00 white spray can.
Here’s one i did a couple years back in the vac bag, It came out beautiful. i am doing a silver cloth one now and will post some pics when finished.
Thanks again for the comments. I’m still not sure which route I am going yet. I need to talk to the pops and bro in law and give them some options
If you are going to hand lam the board, I would go with S-glass. Texallium is very stiff and doing the wraps will be a nightmare. We tried it once and ended up stuffing it in a vac bag. Laminating in a vac bag is not a walk in the park either. I wouldn’t do it without having someone with some experience showing you what to do. Or, watch a lot of the videos on youtube to see how they do it. Do it wrong and you’ll have a lot of wrinkles and creases.
Some ski manufactures use Texallium in ski production. At least they use to use it. Atomic skis out of Austria advertised it as part of their construction. One of the benefits is it has memory. it is better for mantaining shape. Watch a video of a Down Hill Racer in slow motion. The skis that are hard to bend by hand are flexing like a wet noodle.
How that translates to surfboards is something to think about. It might be beneficial to Big Wave Guns.
stretch is doing all his SUPs in it
I think a Tex bottom and cork deck with carbon rail stringerless makes more sense instead of stretch’s bamboo on the bottom, carbon rails and cork desk $1200 short boards.
bamboo and all untreated wood eventually sucks water once dinged, texalium won’t.
plus a non 6 channeled bottom surface without a wrap is easier to glass with this stuff and better than laying up panels of 1/16" balsa with tape or super glue
but i’d still bag it
thanks petec. interesting nugget learned here…Can we assume everyhting but white will get hot under the glass then?
I was on this tex kick for a week, wanted to do a tex board. I see tex in boards today and I think car parts… Just my taste anyway.
For skis, carbon. Way better memory and life: https://www.dpsskis.com/ski/spoon. The way factories can weave graphite now, you can get all these different characterisitics. So for surf and SUP, my vote is for Carbon or Kevlar. Has to be better than aluminized glass… Some US distributors stopped selling tex because it’s no longer made in the states, hard to know the quality you’re getting.
Im not sure i get the Texalium thing beside looks kinda cool? so its glass based with a very thin coating of aluminium originally made by hexcel. its a twill weave so not great unless you do two opposing layers?? its no stronger and no lighter and its harder to lay up plus aluminium and salt water are never a great combo if they should ever make contact. Maybe im missing something ???
yeah, I would go with the looks thing as the reason. Sure it provides a layer of stiffness, and hey, why use some fancy white weaves when you can use this stuff. I was in Hood River and wandered into a “boarding” store and ran into one of those lib tech surfboard/skimboard things. It was painfully obvious to the store guy that he knew waaay more than I ever could about the technology when I asked him how thick the texalium layup was, and after I mentioned that it was more cosmetic unless it was thicker, and bagged with other layups, yada, yada, yada. He would have none of my pathetic knowledge, and I finally realized he was blind to any amount of reason or experience, so I put the board back down, let him tower over me with his infinite wisdom and went over to the clearance box of hats. Gold mine. I bought three good ones for $20.
you know mike olson’s been around along time
he spent allot of time on swaylock as well as delbertpumpernickle/holly jiving and jousting with Bert and Greg almost 10 years ago.
probably was the first to talk about basalt fiberglass from russia etc etc
so i find it interesting that’s he’s using texalium in his boards because I thought his builds were closer to waht Mike Daniel’s and the Brasington brothers were doing down at coil.
But texalium would be an interesting component in his libtech dd2d waterboards
I think his boards are almost built like his snowboards with the sidewall rubber dampners in the rails an all…
also why is stretch using it on his SUPs?
gotta be expensive and for what?
He seesm to have a handle on the tech more than the average joe shaper out there
It’s the shiny metallic finish that gets it hot, not so much the color with this stuff. It gets REALLY hot; enough to easily melt wax on the few poly boards I’ve seen it on. Solar loading on the aluminum is refracted back by the clear glass over it so the heat is multiplied. Aluminum is one of the best heat conductors, so most all the heat goes inward because the temp is lower than the skin. The look is not worth this trouble in my opnion, and as previously said it doesn’t offer any strength advantage. Also be advised that it’s not easy to cut with a blade (or scissors either), keep this in mind when trimming an inlay when glassing.
