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.