There are many different types of fiberglass cloth, warp, S glass, E glass, Hexel, etc. Is there any that i missed? Whats the REAL differences if any? Which ones are really stronger and worth the extra money if any?
*Warp glass has more glass in one direction, giving more strength/stiffness in this direction *S-Glass or E-glass have different coats of sizeing. The sizeing act as coupling agent when laminating. S-Glass is supposedly 1/3 better tensile strength than E-glass. More info http://www.marinecomposites.com/PDF_Files/G_Composite_Materials.pdf . Worth some reading. *Hexel is a brand name http://www.hexcel.com/ Archive has tons more info. regards, Håvard
As Havard said S glass is the top dog amongst fiberglass. But good tensile strength doesn’t really mean much in surfboards. Compression strength does and they (the fabric manufacturers) really can’t accurately test compression without a resin to hold it in a compression test. This tests the resin as much as the fabric and different resins obviously will give different results. In practice S glass does give you between 5-10% advantage over e-glass. Remember, this all has to do with strength to weight. So, what this means is that an s-glass laminate of 4 oz. is equal to an e-glass laminate of about 4.4 oz… maybe. In a typical shortboard this will save you about 2-3 ounces of weight in the finished board and add about $15 – $20 in costs. Whether this is worth it is up to the builder and the customer.
S-glass has a higher ratio of aluminum than E-glass. Not as much as the silvery Texalium which has even more aluminum on one side of the glass. Now I don’t know that much about glass but they use Texalium on the blades of hockey sticks so there must be some advantage in impact strength. Or the shiny surface is a nice marketing ploy. (Usually a negative statement, but US manufacturers need to do something to set our boards apart from the imports). So pay a few more dollars and get S-glass, a little embedded aluminum, and perhaps more strength. Glass it with epoxy and you’re bulletproof. Almost ; ) Rob Olliges http://www.hexcelcomposites.com/Markets/Products/Texalium/Default.htm
Texalium is purely a cosmetic addition. If anything you might loose some physicals, but maybe increases in compression on a surfboard. very boardy (stiff). JB Martin actually prints on fiberglass and carbon now. Glass still is fairly soft. Pretty crazy stuff. Sluggo
Anybody experimenting with a bullet proof kevlar board yet???
I did a board 5’10" fish with aircraft/kit plane kevlar used polyester resin. It saturated ok,but epoxy would saturated better from what I had learned from this board. This was back in 1987.
Gregg, When a board breaks, doesn’t the glass fail in tension? I would also think the same for a blunt ding, as opposed to a sharp ding, where the failure might be attributed to shear.