I made a board for a customer some months ago that he had only recently started using. It was made from PUMillennium foam resin researh epoxy.
He left it out in the sun one morningin a boardbag and cooked it. The resin has kind of melted in places and the foam has sunken in on the bottom of the board so much that the fin plugs are now raised a few mm above the surface of the new level. As its both tge resin and foam that have been cooked I cant see how this could have been any faults made during production.
So basically he has not only cooked the resin but also the foam- unrepairable.
After lots of talking and trying to explain to him that it must have had a dose of extreme heat (which he contests that it was extreme) to cause such problems I offered to make him another board if he paid for the materials which he rejected. He wants a refund o a new board for free.
Frankly, I think you’ve been overly generous to him. Perhaps you should explain to him, that stupid behavior ALWAYS has consequences. Most often, the consequences are not desirable. My belief is that the customer is lying to you. I’ve dealt with this sort of thing a few times before. The lying, I mean. Stand your ground.
I have never had heat affect RR epoxy adversely, but I have had foam do weird stuff in the heat - expand, shrink, or kinda ripple. And I’ve also had boards that survive extreme heat with no problems.
If you show it to your foam supplier they may have some insight, and maybe give you a deal on a new blank. I have heard that sometimes foam will have issues due to a bad mix or not mixed enough before pouring.
I had a blank go weird like that, no heat, and my supplier gave me 2 new blanks free, after talking with their source. Fiberglass Hawaii, good guys.
It doesnt sound like a production defect on your end, as you say. Pretty much everyone knows surfboards do not come with a warranty.
I guess it comes down to how bad do you want to defend your reputation, but this guy does not sound like a reasonable customer.
As it is both the resin and the foam that is affected I cant see how it could be a foam problem. I dont make many epoxy boards so this one I can remember clearly the production, and there were no issues during production during lamination and the resin cured fine.
I was talking to a guy last month about boards and he mentioned that he had a fairly well know big brand epoxy board (not one of mine) that he had kind of melted, but he admitted that it had got extremely hot whrn he had left it in his car, other than that it seems like its a rare occurrance.
But with the sun and heat being so strong in my part of the world if you are careless and cook your board I think its unreasonable to expect the shaper to pick up the bill.
I’ve had several bad experiences with epoxy over PU foam… always with colored/pigmented boards getting warm in the sun…it did not take “extreme” heat to do the damage. Never with epoxy over EPS. If I had a board implode like that I would make a new one at my cost and write it off as R&D costs associated with new material combinations. Learning curves cost money.
That being said when playing with new materials I try to only do it on my own boards until they are dialed in/no failure.
I had an eps board that sucked in a bunch of water, because of my stupidity, which is another story :(,
BUT I put it outside under a moving blanket with a thermometer under the blanket to monitor the temp, so I could heat the water out the board. Under the blanket, it got to 140F fairly quickly. I could see it getting to the melting point of the foam without a problem.
I don’t know what temp PU blanks melt at, but read a FOAMEZ reference that says EPS and XPS melt around 185f and 165f respectively. Pretty easy to get to that in a bag in the sun.
Not your fault. Boards are not meant to be put in ovens.
Offering to do a board at cost is pretty generous. If I did what he did, I would not tell anybody.
I buy millenniums with crooked stringers and cut them out for reflux.
I store a lot of blanks outside my wood shop, one with no glassing at all shrunk severely, so badly that the stringer deflected a good 2-3" off to one side, another the deck caved in. This why I leave them in the sun for months at a time, if they are going to F-up I want it to be before I have wasted precious hours shaping
I kept about two hundred blanks in a Derrels Storage unit in Bakersfield for two years. The unit was not temp controlled. If it’s 104 in the shade; you can imagine how hot it was in that unit. No problems with any of them. I left a board that I had just got back from the glasser in a bag all day once on Maui. It was not especially hot that day. Maybe 75f. It shrunk so bad that it was not saleable. Midget’s foam. I never have any trouble with Millennium foam and there glue ups are great. Of course I don’t buy seconds.
The problem is not the board but the customer.
He knows he’s done the wrong thing or didn’t know until it was too late and rather than accept what he has done he’s angry at you. He’s looking to blame anyone except himself.
You can explain that once the board leaves the showroom, like a car, it’s the owners complete responsibility. Your responsibility ends at the door unless it’s faulty. And that’s a legal definition he would have to prove.
As no one else has returned a board , it has to be how the board has been cared for. I would avoid saying things like “abuse, stupidity, carelessness” because he will take that as a personal attack.
You’re being very generous to offer a new board but if you still feel good about it offer it again and leave it at that. A totally free board is out of the question. Let him choose to have nothing or pay for the materials.
He certainly doesn’t want to keep the damaged board as that’s a reminder of his absolute stupidity so you need to get that board back or he will use it against you as bad advertising. I would use it as advertising of What Happens with a board in a car, or probably best to destroy it as it’s always going to shit you every time you see it too.
They grey area between Fuck Off and a totally free board is your level of generosity.
Torn on this one. I have subjected boards to tons of heat over the past 30 years and never had anything like that happen. Used to leave them in a blazing hot car…never a problem. A friend on the other had made a couple boards using Ice9 blanks and guess what…the first time they were subjected to moderate heat in the bed of his truck they did the exact same thing the OP describes.
While the customer is at least partly at fault I am leaning towards it being a problem with the blank. Call Millenium. Perhaps they will help you with a blank so you can make it right.
This is a tough one. In my trade as a builder I occasionally get customers who are entirely unreasonable. My rule of thumb is I am generally prepared to pay $500-$1000 to make these things go away. Probably happens about every two years or so. I am able to wear these occasional losses since 95% of the people I deal with are great customers. My reputation is paramount to me and I’m not going to risk it for what I can earn in a few days of work. Notwithstanding the potential aggravation if they decide to start involving lawyers.
Often years later those difficult people approach me for more work. I just tell them that I’m too busy. Once bitten twice shy aye!
It is not uncommon in my trade to have disputes involving tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fortunately this has never happened to me, but if it did I guess I’d just have to leave it to the lawyers and hope for the best.
Stay with epoxy over EPS; guaranteed success. I’ve had at least three epoxy over PU boards shrink terribly. I’d imagine there are others I’ve sold that experienced the same thing, but no one has come back except for another board. I swore off PE resins a long time ago and last year I built my last epoxy over PU foam board (my last Clark blank). I’m completely epoxy over EPS foam. I am heartbroken over the board my daughter shaped two years ago that is quickly becoming a shrunken head for her. Building her a new one this summer with EPS.
And the bunk PU foam that shrunk in all instances was from… ‘US ______’ or maybe ’ BLANKS’ is more confusing. There, now you can’t figure it out. I’ve never used Millenium. YMMV.
There are two different PU foam formulas.
TDI & MDI.
One shrinks with heat, one expands.
Clark expanded with heat. So does US Blanks.
That is why you see old Clark blanks with sunken stringers.
When it shrinks, the opposite happens, the stringer appears to have swollen.
Nope. Foam shrunk.
Without naming names, several foam companies foams shrink.
I prefer the the foam that swells, at least the stringer won’t crack and leak water later down the road.
hmm…
I was just about to epoxy over a recycled PU blank this afternoon.
Now I’m wondering if I could seal it with poly resin first and whether a vent helps.
I’m just a backyarder but I need the board to survive in the back of a car with the windows cracked. Not so worried about cosmetics. If a car gets too hot even with the windows cracked this is a problem
I might now do poly resin with microcells to seal and then epoxy over the top for the PU blank. Hopefully fibre is not needed with the poly resin to prevent expansion.
Regards business matters. Bear in mind I’m not a pro but ideas:
instructions with the board “keep away from hot surfaces such as metal bed of a pickup truck”
just take a loss to avoid grief. I’ve heard this advised from friends in other businesses. They even had people doing much worse but decided to let it go. When it goes over a threshold it’s time to act different
put something in the board which changes to ‘warranty void’ if going over a threshold temperature
Clark is your problem. Unstable. Poly blank are so consistent these days that when I hear this kind of shit I immediately know when people are talking about things of which they know little if anything. Never even shaped a Millennium huh. How about Arctic or US Blanks. My guess is probably NOT! If you’re “not a pro” i.e. Not in the business. Don’t give business advise.