Time to vent… Purchased online from Real so no hands on. Didn’t think to ask about weight as my previous experience with Appletree has been light and strong prone boards. The 5’4" 80L is a great shape. The one sent to me weighs 15.5lbs or 7kg. It is very nose heavy. In my view, $2000 for a board this small and this heavy is an outright insult.
Appletree responded to my request for a lighter board with, *I have been informed that your warranty claim has been denied on this. Weight is something that we typically do not warranty, we also weigh every individual board before packing this board falls well within the acceptable to deviation. While we understand people enjoy a light board we believe that the benefits of the closed cell foam and a board that last outweigh the the negative of adding a little extra weight!"
I see there are a lot of positive reviews on their wing boards, but imo, they suck and should be avoided unless you can hand pick one or purchase mine at a huge discount. PM me. Bay Area pick up.
I had an Appletree for prone, and a Sunova for winging. Both way too heavy, I will rarely buy a production board these days. Much rather support a smaller shaper who makes a fully custom, lighter, and better board for much cheaper.
Nils in Hood River, Vince in Santa Cruz, Portal in both Cali & Florida. All great options.
Yup you can get Portal from CA now. My last one was from there. Whether they come from CA or Florida doesn’t really matter, shipping is still pretty cheap
The advantage of a production board is supposed to be the exact shape you tried or was tested; uniform construction and weight, and less expensive than custom. I’ve seen Vince Broglio’s boards, and they look great. Now with the mass inflation from tarrifs/price gouging, custom is cheaper. And that a company won’t stand behind their production product makes a custom board a good risk currently.
Leaned this in high school donkey years ago but just in case you’re not aware:
Difference Method (With vs Without):
When using a scale that may not be perfectly precise (e.g., ±0.5 kg bathroom scale), weighing yourself multiple times, and then yourself holding the object, helps cancel out systematic errors in the scale.
For example, if the scale reads 0.3 kg higher than true value consistently, the error cancels when subtracting.
Best practice:
Take 3–5 readings of yourself alone.
Take 3–5 readings of yourself holding the object.
Average each group.
Subtract the two means.
This can get you within ~100–200g accuracy even on imprecise home scales.
Weighing the Object Directly:
If the object is light relative to the resolution of the scale, small weight changes won’t register or will fluctuate.
Bathroom and shipping scales may round to the nearest 0.2–0.5 kg.
My VB board is so great. Perfect shape for surfing on wing & parawing.
Also check out Nils from Hood River, his boards are super light. Shapes are not what you’d normally expect, but they work damn well. And he’s started to use the same foam as Appletree on his CNC machine - but a hell of a lot lighter.
When you pick up a carbon board and say, “fark, that’s a heavy board” and every time you try to lift it onto your car, and carry up steep slippery path, and pump in 200 yards, and so on. My old Kalama 5’10 x 29 123 liter double sandwich with countless footstrap inserts is lighter, and certainly better balanced.
Yes used bath scale as an independant and as per holding object. Sent findings per request to the rep with pictures. Waited 2 weeks for the official determination that it was within spec. Again, the board is very nice, just not at all within the realm of what most other board manufactures would consider normal weight nor apparently per MacKite, what Apple tree would hope their boards should be.
As I said, it’s heavier than my overbuilt (double sandwich eps) 5’10 sup foil board that has a published weight of 7kg or 15.5lbs. Amos uses EPS covered with carbon and vacuum bagged, so very light, but you are giving up durability for sure. I’ve picked up Appletree wing boards, mids, and even Omen (made by Appletree) of similar size and they were not noticeably heavy. The board I have is either a new super heavy foam to prevent heel dents, or they have several layers of glass under the carbon, and they wet layed each layer without vacuum bagging, and an extra cushion of epoxy for sanding! Thanks all for allowing me to vent. At least the board will be indestructible.
Weighing the Object Directly: