SURFING; IN A FIX

I stopped by to visit a long time friend today who once shared a spot in the line up beside a piling at one of Pacific Beaches most predominant left peaks. We met at his business, the busiest surfboard repair shop in So. California and rapped about surfboards for over an hour. He and I came to one conclusion pretty quickly, back in our day the most frequent pain in the ass repair was due to de lamination. Caused by the blank itself, a bad pour or maybe some kind of contamination contracted accidentally some where along the production line. Super blue and ultra light blanks seemed to encourage even more frequent separations between foam and glass. Laminated fiberglass becomes a very springy material. If it gets depressed into soft foam by a striking action it will cause a reverse gravitational pull away from the depressed foam. M.A's law. De lamination's and heat bubbles can also result from leaving a dark colored board exposed to the hot sun for to long. The early nineties introduced us to our first foam borne epidemic, gassing. It caused little teeny tiny air vents to amass on the boards finished surface called blow throughs or pin air. My suspicion is maybe the EPA may have encouraged Grubby Clark to alter his foam blowing formulation. Or some newly installed foam mixing equipment could have been the culprit. When the glassing factories called him out on this problem, Clark claimed the glassers were at fault for adding to much MEK to the resin. Then told label owners if he heard of them purchasing blanks from any other supplier that he would cut them off completely. Clark's airtight monopoly gave him ultimate power over us builder types. That’s when some imaginative surfboard builder stumbled onto an acrylic floor sealer that acted as our quick fix surfboard sealer. It worked pretty well and is still in use today. Acrylic when scuffed back covers a multitude of sanding sins.
Today’s biggest problems like everything else in the world are more complicated. The influx of knock off, cheaply built foreign boards that are sold by discount chain stores are the new repair waiting to happen. And I am so sorry but the Styrofoam - epoxy built surfboards, custom or composite continue to be his local reoccurring nightmare. Some of the major eco friendly brands have completely disappeared. Water resistant in no way means waterproof.
Polyester, polyurethane boards have their share of problems too but they seem to relate more to a new product or procedure. I.e., Installation problems with fcs, futures, rookies fabricating glass-ons and areas that contain non subtle design gimmicks. More on mine and my righteous friends thoughts on surfboard building coming soon.

EPS Surfboard Foam: Choices

Happy New Years to all, in order for these observations to make more sense please read them in posted order. EPS, ENHANCED-PENTANE-STYROFOAM, I made that up. Glassed with BGF Aerialite fiberglass drenched in Resin Research epoxy is another fairly popular method of high performance surfboard building. As a builder I find epoxy construction to be more problematic than polyester. Due to the relative newness of this epoxy we lack some badly needed effective tricks and techniques to put out a truly tightly built EPS product, yet. This is when the panel of foam mowers really blew my mind. Just because I’m old school, tried and true, I thought the conversation would go differently. They clearly recommended EPS not only because it makes ecological sense. They genuinely enjoy the way their own personal EPS boards ride, despite there lack of rack appeal. Another claim is that they don’t break down near as fast. And the sanded finish version closely resembles a poly finished in the same manner.
So my four shapers, after educating me into the present recommend only two EPS blanks. Scary….
Austin Foam, offers great service, selection, water resistance, densities and sizes.
Prop Foam, fills their needs for the more custom parabolic type blanks.
My intent for writing this is so you the surfboard riding public can be confident in ordering custom boards from your favorite professional builders again. And have your own ideas of the matierals you’d like your board built with.