Why have I not seen 3 lb. eps blanks?

Industry Talk
21

…not tryng to torture you here! Just look up my thread on stringerless longboards for some insight.

Have fun…here is a bi more for you. The shroter the board (fulcrum) the less likely the span (length) is to break under normal load bearing (wave pounding on your stick) situations.

Thickness is the greatest deterrent to any given span breaking. Think about budling a wood deck for your house. If you used 2x4 framing and tried to make the beams span 20 ft. with all the decking on it, it would break. And if it didn’t, it probably would once you had a BBQ to celebrate it’s completion and invited 30 friends over and loaded the keg and BBQ grill and food on it as well. Now if you used 2x12 beams instead for your structure, ASTM tests would probably say "you’re okay here And if the city building inspector came out, he would have told you how far the beams can be apart.

This is the same thinking that affects people when ordering surfboards. Short boards are less subject to breakage compared to long ones. So if you are looking to eliminate stringer(s), you need to pay special attention to what reinforcement you alternately use. Lest you be disappointed when you little toothpick snaps under the load of a two foot wave.

This is physics, and I am sometimes very surprised at how novice builders approach board building. If you are planning your quad to be 2" thick, I suggest you look into using Warp glass. This fabric has 65% of the glass strand runing nose to tail (aka the “warp”) and 33% of the remaining glass strand positioned on the “weft” aka “fill”. Use two layers of your choice of ounce cloth and wrap BOTH LAYERS onto the other side. This will give you appreciable strength throughout the perimeter of the board where it is most likely to break. Surfboards, for the most part, are not subject to spliting down the middle…so use of warp glass makes a lot of sense to use.

The majority of surfboards break because the bottom stretches and the deck buckles. Normal load bearing in surfing cnditions results in tensioning (stretching) of the bottom and compression of the deck layers of glass: hence the deck buckle…also known as failure.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

22

Thank’s for the insight!

Well said.

23

When Clark shut down and the foam panic ensued a customer who is a big guy and rides big boards bought two 3# EPS blanks from a facility who didn’t have any surf blank background but that’s what the customer thought he wanted. One of the blanks finally ended up with Jim and he shaped an 11’ step deck semi-pig. The blank seemed like it was 6" thick it took so many passes to get through that foam. He put two 1/4 bass sticks (or maybe balsa) in at about 1 1/8" apart and dropped a single fin box in her. The board was glassed double 4 single 4 and was glossed and polished. The final board was at least has heavy as a poly board of the same dims and the friggin thing was bullet proof. Insane. Never again. It was overkill…over engineered.

With all that ranting my only point was that for us and our experience with 3# in big longboards was that it’s no good. It might have been interesting at 12’ and 3" thick but still would’ve been heavy unlike what we’ve been able to accomplish with the 1.5 # and 2 # blanks from Segway.

Ken’s foam rocks. We get great feedback from customers who say they’ve never gone so fast and had so much fun. Bringing smiling faces to a break near you.

24

When I first started reading what you posted, I had a red flag going up then read further and realized we are on the same page.

The beauty of EPS is it’s lightweight, compression charateristics, and shear properties. This isn’t intended to bad rap PU blanks, as I certainly use plenty of PU blanks on a regular basis. I look at both materials for different advantages in my approach to what I offer.

When I use EPS, I actually prefer the lighter densities for allowing me to add what reinforcements I desire to achieve the end result. I’m glassing a 2 lb. White Hot 8’6" mini longboard right now and while working on it I think to myself “god, this thing still feels light and it has double 6 on it…the thing is gonna be bullet proof!”

Then at the same time, next to it I’m glassing a 6’4" “gun” (have to laugh when someone orders a ‘gun’ at 6’4") and he told me to glass it heavy…not strong…but heavy. This is an Ice 9 Mowses blank…and with a 6 bottom and double 6 deck, the thing is STILL lighter than what he probably wants! I mean, how often do you get someone that wants their order heavy?

If someone wants an EPS to ride heavier…and I’m shaping it out of 1.5 or 2 lb…that just means the board is going to be even stronger for the customer. Not to mention that the epoxy is so strong that I’m breaking the skin and initially sanding with 50 grit before moving on. This is esp. true not using Additive F or similar…

I had one guy email me back today from the new 7’4" I made him from EPS and he started with “awesome”…

This guy told me he has an unusually dense body mass for his height. So much so that it disqualifies him from having life insurance, because he’s only 5’8" but over 225 lbs (they look at the numbers and think he must be fat). He’s around 50…but the board fits the bill perfectly for him. Float, maneuverability, strength, the whole gamut.

Another guy I did an 8’8" F.O.Y. (my Fountain of Youth Model…like the guy above) and he gave me the same feedback as your last sentence…‘never gone so fast’…and added “flies over flat spots at Indicator…allows me to roundhouse way out on the flat and hit the lip”. This guy is 60 and still a full oon surfer. Yeah, I build a lot of boards for aging rippers (LOL).

Bottom line is, there is some great foam coming from a number of foamers, and thanks to all of you that keep pushing that envelope!

P.S.

I doubt Jim put balsa stickes into such a longboard…we love the compression balsa delivers but even a couple narrow stringers like that wouldn’t be the best approach against snapping.

25

What a surprise…