While instaling a RSPRO rail saver on a Naish Hokua 9.5 2014 (installation without water) , i tried to replace the rail saver and it actually took out the black paint of the naish logo on the rail! i cant fault the rail saver as i' been using this brand on most of my boards and they are supose to actually stick! but definitly not happy with the quality of the board paint !

anyone had this kind of issue while using a rail saver on a board?

Yes, exactly the same thing happened to me. In fact all the decals on my Nalu which is the same age have easily started to wear off. It seems like the board is missing a top coat perhaps. It chips badly too. I think Naish had a bit of a shocker that year. Shame, because other than these cosmetic issues it has been fine. I probably should have returned the board, really.

It was particularly bad for me because like a dumbass I was positioning the RSPro tape for length, intending to remove the tape msrk
It off, so did not pay attention to which way up the tape was. I lightly stuck one end only to the front rail and measured it off. But when I tried to take the RSPro tape off it started removing the logo and the lacquer too. I'd never get this off the tape, so the choice was either pull the tape away, throw it away (at great cost) and have a board with mess on it, or just stick the tape down where it was. So now I have one rail on the board with RSPro tape upside down. Bloody annoying. That tape is on there for life now. It's such a shame - I have two other old Naishes and they have been remarkably bombproof. Didn't even need rail tape.Something definitely went a bit wrong with their quality control for a while there IMO.

I think it's more likely to happen in cold climates..

I'd recomend using a hair drier to warm up the tape before lifting it..

Some boards are worse than others with graphic lifting problems and some have clear coats over their decals..

I think this is a price that we pay for light boards..

The old Naishes I have (12ft and 17ft Glide) are totally bombproof and barely a scratch on them despite years of service. Perfectly light enough too. I'm afraid that I don't accept this is necessarily related to the weight of the board.

And I was using a hair drier, and wet application too. I can actually rub the decals off on the rails using just a finger. Something isn't right.

But as I say, this clearly isn't true of all Naish boards. I just got unlucky. I'm thinking of buying a new Naish too, so it clearly hasn't put me off the brand totally. But I'll be having a good look at the paintwork before handing over my cash.

All brands have their wobbles in production from time to time.

from all the boards I repair whenever there is rail tape of most brands will pull the paint or at least the lacker off, its not surprising when you see how much high build primer they slap on though to cover the poor glassing. Chose a board that has no paint to chip and you wont need rail tape simple.

I dunno Charlie, I have a Surftech Ultraflx board that has no paint, and the rails are not chipped but are crazy-paved under the surface from paddle strikes. So even if you don't have paint you still might need rail tape with some constructions. Which is a real PITA because I don't like rail tape and it's SO expensive.

Select to expand quote

Area10 said..
I dunno Charlie, I have a Surftech Ultraflx board that has no paint, and the rails are not chipped but are crazy-paved under the surface from paddle strikes. So even if you don't have paint you still might need rail tape with some constructions. Which is a real PITA because I don't like rail tape and it's SO expensive.

that problem is due to the particular probably cheap glass they used, Pay a bit more and uses the right glass and you can bash it as many times as you want, I found that problem when I started building boards, it took me 3 years to find the right glass getting samples and doing a lot or research spending hours testing different ones but what a relief when I figured it out! it does mean you have to test every new material also for similar problems.

But no paint to chip, no added weight of filler primer and paint, no expensive rail tape just keep it clean and simple.

Most of the problems with Naish regarding this were the 2014 boards. So I think it was a shocker of a year. I have a 2015 Nalu and it's grand

There were some issues with many of the Cobra produced boards of the same year with finish, I had a carbon wave board (not Naish) that seemd to have been sanded in places all the way through the outer carbon layer, on the rails it was basically the divinycell foam with the faintest hint of carbon and paint over the top. It was a Cobra factory issue, 2014 was a shocker for many boards coming out that year, mine was replaced, no question.
My 2017 Freeride has a coarse weave Kevlar stripe visible all the way down the rail, I'm not prone to whacking my rails but at least it's an attempt by Starboard to improve the rail protection situation from the factory. Ill probably still put rail saver pro onto it because it's a board I would like to be able to lend to friends and family and not stress myself!

Select to expand quote

DavidJohn said..
I think this is a price that we pay for light boards..

On the opposite, painted boards are heavier. On a 9' boards, the various paint + varnish layers amount for nearly 1kg. The brushed carbon look is a good compromise, it allows for a quick glassing job but with not much added weight.

Paint allows less manual labor, so saves money. It covers glassing glitches (messy wrap job in the rails, pinholes, sanding through the glass and covering the hole with paste...) made when working too quickly and/or with non expert glassers.

It is easy to produce a small quantity of boards with quality glassing, as custom shops do every day, but it is nearly impossible to produce hundreds of hand-glassed boards per month without resorting to paint.

Select to expand quote

JonathanC said..
There were some issues with many of the Cobra produced boards of the same year with finish...

So is that a warning to stay away from Cobra's 2014 boards? Hard to believe that the biggest factory can't get it right.

bare in mind that just because it is a naish,fanatic,starboard etc etc does not mean it came from cobra. A lot of the companies use both cobra and other factories in china and the like to build different boards in there range depending on the price point they are trying to hit and even then each factory will have different skill levels of workers and quality of materials again that can be used to hit price points but meaning you are getting a very different product.

My understanding is that cobra at one point in time was handling 60% of all big SUP companies few years ago..not sure that is still the case in 2016 but that could explain the issue they had

this post is like some woman complaining about the colour shade of her fingernail polish......boards don't last for ever. If they they are made with proven construction techniques......you gotta give the company a little leeway if sometimes the cosmetics have an oops ?

Paint crumbling off the board of it's own accord is not just cosmetic, it's poor construction quality.

All brands have their off days. But denying that a product isn't as good as it should be only makes the purchaser sound like a mug, and will encourage the brands to rip us off even more.

In many ways these forums probably contribute to keeping product quality high. My suspicion is that unless a brand has someone actually at the factory watching the production line and making sure things are done as agreed, then shoddy work will happen.

Its not "of its own accord"........if you are adding a rail tape that has active chemical components you must be adding something that the board is not designed for.......it is not "normal use"

Yeah I was talking about what I has said about the paintwork in addition to the rail tape saga. It chips without apparent contact with anything.

But as I say, all brands have their off moments. There are many examples on this forum for instance of the Fanatic paint bubbling, which my Fanatic also shows, alongside some strange discolouration of the paint over time that I've not seen on any other board.

Ironically, two of the boards that have held up best over time are my 2011 Naish Glides. Still spotless after all these years left outside through winter snow and summer heat. They really built them back then.