What is your experience with riding and building board with an hybrid layup (carbon/glass) compare to a 100% carbon board ?
I wonder if the gain in stiffness of 100% carbon foilboard is noticable for a regular joe like me. If it’s not to noticable, just using carbon fabric in strategical (under the foam pad, around trackboxes) and using fiberglass on the rest of the board could reduce material price and make a board less prone to crack on the rail as carbon is very brittle on curve area.
I enjoy building boards. I’m building 2-3 boards a year since I’ve started foiling three years ago.
My shady backyard shaping background was all EPS surfboards and fiberglass. When I jumped into the foiling world, I quickly notice that the majority of board we’re all carbon. It made senses, stiff and strong was the way to go. So I jumped into the bandwagon and bought a vaccum, bag, peelply, carbon and off I went. But I’m now questioning if I can get away using a bit less carbon on my board and more S-Glass.
If your foil tracks are tied through to the deck & foot area, you don’t need to use Carbon. A properly engineered foil/deck connection is more important than glass vs carbon. You also don’t need to vacuum bag your carbon if you are very good with your laminating technique.
It depends a lot on what type of board you are building, a 6" thick DW board will be plenty stiff out of glass. If you are making a thin prone board or dockstart board, full carbon will help. I like intermediate modulus carbon for boards since it is tougher than standard carbon.
My primary DW board is hybrid, 4 oz glass with carbon on the standing zone and reinforcing the boxes. It’s a simple hand layup on 1.5 lb EPS and has held up for more than a season of use. Weight is acceptable around 13lbs at 8’2" ~120 liters
My custom is a kalama dw is mainly glass. Only the foil box area and standing area is carbon. You will mainly save cost, the weight will be somewhat similar.
It’s my understanding that the hybrid layoff doesn’t really do much because the glass has so much more elongation That the carbon will be broken before the glass is even loaded up. That being said I always throw a layer of 2 ounce over the carbon just as a layer to hold surface tension on my hot coat and A sacrificial sanding layer
To be clear, I mean hybrid as in carbon patches around the boxes and standing area, nose and tail are glass only. A single layer of 4 oz isn’t very ding resistant but it’s cheap and easy to laminate and keeps the water out.
After switching to XPS foam entirely I have gone with the laminating schedule of 4.8 carbon on standing surfaces and 3 patches over the boxes. My boxes are tied to the deck with HD foam stringers and not a cassette style. Saves lots of weight and is just as strong. 6oz glass over the nose and tail. Swing weight isn’t bad and with XPS I can get away with having a few water leaking dings until I care enough to fix them.
Ive been building boards for myself for a few years too and have gone down a similar path. I use mostly carbon with some 2oz in strategic zones around the board for some ding resistance. I also have two PVC stringers in my boards which helps with the stiffness a lot so I’m mainly focused on weight. Fiberglass doesn’t vacuum bag on its own very fell and I’ve found that vacuum bagging makes boards so significantly lighter that for me its really worth it.
Yeah, that’s my biggest take away. Vacuuming is essential, and there are so many vacuuming consumables that the cost of the carbon is pretty insignificant.
Yeah Ive gotten pretty good at reusing my bags and sometimes I can get away with reusing the airweave but everything else is one use so it adds up quick. Im in LA though and have a local aircraft spruce shop so at least I dont have to pay shipping costs lol.
Vacuum bag consumable is pretty low for me, just the peel ply which I get from fabric shop and breather clothes which I now just use cheap paper towels from the dollar store. The bag can be re used. I suck at hand laminate so vacuum bagging works really well for me. Plus I use cork as sandwich material so it’s impossible to keep it down without vacuum bagging.
Noooo! That’s exactly what I thought but trust me it’s not an economical use of your time to do just do one. The skills you’ve learned deserve to be used again… the process will speed up massively and the mistakes will reduce. I’ve made 15-20 and I’m at a point now were I could knock one out in a week around a job/family if I had to.
I’m really hard on my board and keep dinging them. Harness hook on the deck, board collision on the rails, lack of boardbag when hitchiking, dropping a foil part (or a rhum bottle) on the board. Dinging a board is never a problem !
What I’ve come to dislike about carbon is not the price but the fragility of it under point load and the fact that EPS core suck so much water. I rather use the money on a good sandwich core and fiberglass.
For the trackbox reinforcement, my boxes are set into a 1.5’’ PVC foam casette because I’m afraid of water leakage thru the boxes sides. Then, I usually connect that casette to the deck with PVC foam reinforcement, On my last one, I’ve use Beasho’s style carbon arrow shaft to connect the deck to the bottom and the boxes (Build a Better Foil Board - #10 by Beasho). Let see how it hold up.
I think the better way would be to go with 100% laminated boxes and carbon rods but I’m not there yet.
For my vacuum bagging setup, consumables are not that expensive. I have a tube type of bag that I reuse with homemade C-channel clamps (The Vacuum Bag Closure) and I use cheap polyester batting as a breather. So i just need to buy peelply. I live far from big cities in Eastern Canada so I try to keep shipment cost to a minimum.
Yeah, I make my own boards, purely for durability and stiffness reasons. I only make prom boards and I make them out of a solid PVC blank. They’re indestructible when wrapped in carbon. I think for a Seth or a wing board over 60 L, the solid PVC core would be too heavy, but you could always do a full PVC deck. Get a 1/2 in sheet of divinycell And do carbon under the dim cell in the highest load areas like under your feet and carbon wrap on the outside
Have any of you guys used XPS or some other kind of waterproof foam similar to apple tree in your home builds? @TooMuchEpoxy I agree that doing 100% divinycell would just be too heavy as Im only making wing boards.
Not an expert, this just my amateur understanding.
Xps has outgassing issues which can lead to delamination issues. This why appletree infuses their boards and why most other xps builders use vacuum bagging. Done right, no issues with xps.
Pvc does not have the same outgassing issues as xps.