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.