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Bouke-Witchcraft said..

duzzi said..

Bouke-Witchcraft said..

Hmmm in the early 2000s there was a brand making boards with Dyneema. But whenever I saw such a board in half, I didnt see any Dyneema. ...

And before Duzzi starts complaining again: I do not need to make promotion here and secondly, every one can see where it is coming from and make up their own mind. We have a waiting list which is increasing as it is. If I get PWA riders asking for sponsorship I turn them down.

Good, there is a difference between a forum and advertisement, and if it takes complaining to stop your not so subtle advertisement so be it. If you could also stop the refrain that you are the only person on the planet who knows how to build a board and the boasting and especially your bad mouthing of other builders it would be great.

So in your opinion, who is the best? With best meaning least damaging for the environment. Just because Witchcraft is not in magazines or the PWA, doesnt mean anything, apart from that it doesnt seem to fit in your picture. I had a call yesterday from a customer from Holland about his new board. ... bla bla bla ...

See ... that is what you do. You come into a forum, bad mouth pretty much any other manufacturer on the planet, make unverifiable claims left and right, be it construction, materials, durability, performance, and then demand that people enter a discussion about your claims.

Sorry but no. There is no other manufacturer who behaves like this. Nobody else comes in and starts advertising and claiming the superiority of their product. It is unbecoming and quite a bit crass ..

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duzzi said..




See ... that is what you do. You come into a forum, bad mouth pretty much any other manufacturer on the planet, make unverifiable claims left and right, be it construction, materials, durability, performance, and then demand that people enter a discussion about your claims.

Sorry but no. There is no other manufacturer who behaves like this. Nobody else comes in and starts advertising and claiming the superiority of their product. It is unbecoming and quite a bit crass ..

Ah, but my claims are verifiable. Maybe not from your arm chair and it will take some effort to do so but you can (should!) do so before accusing someone. You can look up mechanical properties, you can look beyond than what you see in your limited (from a windsurfing POV) surroundings (Yes I remember where you sail). Make a journey around the most frequented windsurf spots in the world (I have and know many people who have as well) and talk to people and talk to repair guys. There is a lot more that people arent saying on the internet but will say in person. Come and have a look in my workshop as many people have. Doors are open every day. Have a look on the internet and see if there are board brands selling direct. There are various sail brands selling direct, at least in Europe. Apart from custom board makers, there is one selling boards direct, Gun sails. I doubt that you are aware but to inform you, they have been trying to get into the board market various times but never with boards that were made in Cobra. That is a bit odd isnt it? When 90% of all boards are made in Cobra. Now they sell Sunova. Where are they made?
Besides, claiming that it is your ambition to become 10 times carbon neutral is certainly not verifiable but that is believed? I am the last person you should get mad at for anything that is wrong in the current windsurf industry situation. I just see more than a regular type board warrior and hobby windsurfer like yourself and point some of it out even if some of it is against my own interest. For me it is great there are no brands selling direct against lower prices. And then I am getting bad mouthed for it? Like I said before, dont shoot the messenger.

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tarquin1 said..
www.bcomp.ch/
These guys do flax and hybrid flax carbon tapes. I have used it for the rails on a SUP. I used some of their ski cores to make panels for a hollow wood SUP as well.

thanks for the Link mate. great amount of info on their website and from that i think i may have found a distributor just down the road from where i live. once i sort out some vacuum kit a friend offered me i may give it a try in a build down the track.

graph from the bcomp website.

I do think it's worth trying the flax fibre.
I can't verify the claims, but I've read and seen evidence to asume that flax fibre has very good mechanical properties for board building. Sorry, can't remember the sources, but I seem to remember a video of a wind turbine wing bent to its breaking point with the resilience of the flax fibre surprising the scientists.
Honestly, I think anything that could be a step forward is worth trying on a small scale.
What worries me most, though, is not the fiber but the foam. EPS is just an eco disaster from what I know. surfers have built boards from cardboard honeycomb and it sounds appealing to me, but sadly I doubt it would take the forces generated in windsurfing.

there is a company in europe called BEWiSynbra that produces 100% recycled eps. if in europe might be worth looking into what they can provide and if they do blocks.

I have just been on the Composite Evolutions webpages and their Biotex materials have gone. For about 5 years they were focused on heat cured PLA / flax, jute and hemp fibres.

But they now seem to be focused on their prepreg processing of CFRP. Easycomposites.com also used to stock their Biotex have also removed the fabrics from their pages. I have not spoken to the Composite Evolutions MD (who I have worked with before by building display boards for shows) for a good 5 years. I have also tried to find the Matrix Composites flax pages and they have gone too. I get the impression there was not a big market in the UK for Bio-composite materials... yet

The resin I used to use was from: suscomp.com/resins. They have gone under too.

I have been trying to post some graphs of my own, as the one posted by Gestalt is helpful, but only part of the story.

With flax there are things to understand about its use:

1. it absorbs water - it is a plant material after all! You need to bake it before using it and keeping it dry is difficult. 10% moisture is not uncommon if left in atmospheric conditions. I used to tumble dry it before laminating.

2. Its mechanical properties are different to Glass. It is stiffer, lower tensile, lower compression strength, lower elongation at breakage, and irregular (its naturally grown!).

3. It is much lower density. So its pile thickness for the same weight fabric is higher, i.e. higher resin consumption.

4. Cost is higher.

5. Working with it is more difficult.

6. Environmental considerations are difficult to compare, because: Flax is grown, and the parameters regarding how the flax was grown is as important as the processing itself. Growing flax will have local environmental impacts e.g. nitrate/phosphate run off, loss of local biodiversity, pesticide contamination of local ecosystem, potential escape of a non native species into the local ecosystem. And this doesn't even take into account the energy taken to process the pulp to a usable fibre.

7. Growing composite focused Flax will take the land out of production of other things, e.g. food. Biofuels are inefficient / problematic for this reason.

As I have said before, I really like the idea of a bio-derived fabric in a composite. But you cannot simply swap out the glass fibre and expect to have a instant carbon neutral product.

Carbon offsetting / sequestration might be a more successful way to do it. We used to call that environmental abatement at university, i.e. use the polluter pays principle.

I love the fact that BComp are now quoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. I work for an UNESCO Biosphere and we work towards delivering the SDGs and we are trying to work with local companies to start using this language, so I am going to take the BComp example to local companies to show how they can point to helping deliver global change. I haven't been on their website for years. Genuinely inspired.

Gestalt,

have you seen Grant Newby's technique for building surfboards? I tried this technique, but I don't have access to paulownia, so used western red cedar instead. The final weight was too much, but it required very little epoxy. Also if you are in Australia, I think you can get hold of spinifex glues. That way you could make a board out of paulownia and spinifex, you could even build a chambered board with a tiny foot print. Inserts will be problematic, but you could resin impregnate some moso bamboo and route out the boxes in situ. Don't know if that would be tough enough.
wish I had access to paulownia at a sensible price!

Where are you Overner.

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tarquin1 said..
Where are you Overner.

UK

Have you tried Fyne boat kits. They had Paulownia. If not Spain. I know transport gets expensive for longer lengths.
There are more plantations in Europe but its all quite young for the moment.

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tarquin1 said..
Have you tried Fyne boat kits. They had Paulownia. If not Spain. I know transport gets expensive for longer lengths.
There are more plantations in Europe but its all quite young for the moment.

Yes, both tbh. Price was well beyond what I am prepared to pay for an experiment. Both took board costs well over ?500.
The sexiest board I found was a Honeycomb Surfboard By Mike Grobelny, made from chambered paulownia. I could see this working with well thought through reinforcements.
I think weight will always be the biggest penalty for chambered boards.

Tell me about it. I make SUPs! The cost is more than that.
Fyne is the company I was working with for my kit. I got them into Paulownia.

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Overner said..
I have just been on the Composite Evolutions webpages and their Biotex materials have gone. For about 5 years they were focused on heat cured PLA / flax, jute and hemp fibres.

But they now seem to be focused on their prepreg processing of CFRP. Easycomposites.com also used to stock their Biotex have also removed the fabrics from their pages. I have not spoken to the Composite Evolutions MD (who I have worked with before by building display boards for shows) for a good 5 years. I have also tried to find the Matrix Composites flax pages and they have gone too. I get the impression there was not a big market in the UK for Bio-composite materials... yet

The resin I used to use was from: suscomp.com/resins. They have gone under too.

I have been trying to post some graphs of my own, as the one posted by Gestalt is helpful, but only part of the story.

With flax there are things to understand about its use:

1. it absorbs water - it is a plant material after all! You need to bake it before using it and keeping it dry is difficult. 10% moisture is not uncommon if left in atmospheric conditions. I used to tumble dry it before laminating.

2. Its mechanical properties are different to Glass. It is stiffer, lower tensile, lower compression strength, lower elongation at breakage, and irregular (its naturally grown!).

3. It is much lower density. So its pile thickness for the same weight fabric is higher, i.e. higher resin consumption.

4. Cost is higher.

5. Working with it is more difficult.

6. Environmental considerations are difficult to compare, because: Flax is grown, and the parameters regarding how the flax was grown is as important as the processing itself. Growing flax will have local environmental impacts e.g. nitrate/phosphate run off, loss of local biodiversity, pesticide contamination of local ecosystem, potential escape of a non native species into the local ecosystem. And this doesn't even take into account the energy taken to process the pulp to a usable fibre.

7. Growing composite focused Flax will take the land out of production of other things, e.g. food. Biofuels are inefficient / problematic for this reason.

As I have said before, I really like the idea of a bio-derived fabric in a composite. But you cannot simply swap out the glass fibre and expect to have a instant carbon neutral product.

Carbon offsetting / sequestration might be a more successful way to do it. We used to call that environmental abatement at university, i.e. use the polluter pays principle.

I love the fact that BComp are now quoting the UN Sustainable Development Goals. I work for an UNESCO Biosphere and we work towards delivering the SDGs and we are trying to work with local companies to start using this language, so I am going to take the BComp example to local companies to show how they can point to helping deliver global change. I haven't been on their website for years. Genuinely inspired.

Put me off all the negative

It's strange the French rave about flax and love it. Maybe because they are the biggest producers. When I spoke to anyone in the U.K. About it they were not too keen.

I hear you. Do you make hollow wooden boards then?

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tarquin1 said..
It's strange the French rave about flax and love it. Maybe because they are the biggest producers. When I spoke to anyone in the U.K. About it they were not too keen.

Remember the French have masses of high quality fertile land and a relatively low population density compared to the UK. And farming is heavily subsidised in France. I don't know enough about farming flax, but if it is part of a rotation, and doesn't need as much input as edible crops, then you could see that it is a valuable investment. The French have an astonishing agriculture infrastructure, which is light years ahead of us in the UK.
equally it maybe that flax is a low investment high profit crop, so you can understand being excited about it. Where I live most farms scrape a living with a combination of sheep, arable, and farm diversification.

from what i've read, flax is a rotation crop and requires minimal water compared to other crops. if it's grown organically is even better because there are no pesticides etc involved. so from an eco perspective is consider good.

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Gestalt said..
from what i've read, flax is a rotation crop and requires minimal water compared to other crops. if it's grown organically is even better because there are no pesticides etc involved. so from an eco perspective is consider good.

Organic doesn't mean no pesticides or other nasties. But it does mean they should be reduced by using biological and barrier controls where appropriate. Should be better for the local ecosystem, but it won't be better than a natural or semi natural habitat, it's still farming after all.

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Gestalt said..
there is a company in europe called BEWiSynbra that produces 100% recycled eps. if in europe might be worth looking into what they can provide and if they do blocks.

Gestalt, thanks for the tip! Sounds great, but then they don't seem to be present in Germany. Having a block shipped from the Netherlands or even Finland to the south of Germany might be worse than getting a non-recycled one from around the corner.
I might still inquire when there is current need.

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Overner said..
Gestalt,

have you seen Grant Newby's technique for building surfboards? I tried this technique, but I don't have access to paulownia, so used western red cedar instead. The final weight was too much, but it required very little epoxy. Also if you are in Australia, I think you can get hold of spinifex glues. That way you could make a board out of paulownia and spinifex, you could even build a chambered board with a tiny foot print. Inserts will be problematic, but you could resin impregnate some moso bamboo and route out the boxes in situ. Don't know if that would be tough enough.
wish I had access to paulownia at a sensible price!

tarquin (i think it was) put me onto grant newby's work a while back and that lead to me finding the recycled eps. i really like what grant is doing. especially his shapes. ultimately what stopped me from copying his construction was i am trying to avoid vac bagging. i just finished a wave board that was inspired by simmons shapes as are newby's shapes so there is lots for me to look at their.

the board i just finished has paulownia in it but only as woodies around the boxes. it's all as planks and there is a point to make a full board from it down the track just not sure what that looks like yet. Whilst the wave board i just finished its not an ecoboard it's not too far off it, being a mix of paulownia, upcycled glass cloth and bio resin hand laminated with some sustainably grown hoop reinforcing and a very small amount of carbon tape. i didn't call it an eco board so it didn't invite 5 pages of arguing.

that's the obvious way to build a long lasting eco board. recyled eps, bioresin, flax/basalt/glass cloth and sustainably grown veneer. very strong construction.

fortunately i can get bamboo, paulownia (not ply) and balsa locally. i was also thinking similar to you about boxes but in paulownia and didn't follow up because i figured wrapping it in glass to seal it wouldn't withstand damage. did some sketches though. not sure how to resin impregnate something and thinking it may be heavy?.

i have done so much research. having sort advice from many people who are experts in the industry including a guy whos doing balsa boards, people who make the foam, people who've worked at cobra, people that make the cloth and shapers who've been doing it since the 60's. with all i have asked for technical data and reasoning behind choices. have had some really interesting conversations.

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ZeeGerman said..

Gestalt said..
there is a company in europe called BEWiSynbra that produces 100% recycled eps. if in europe might be worth looking into what they can provide and if they do blocks.

Gestalt, thanks for the tip! Sounds great, but then they don't seem to be present in Germany. Having a block shipped from the Netherlands or even Finland to the south of Germany might be worse than getting a non-recycled one from around the corner.
I might still inquire when there is current need.

i guess depends on where the one from around the corner comes from.

you never know, BEWiSynbra may supply raw material to someone in germany that can sell you a block so this is only a lead. they may know someone who knows someone etc......

this is one of my bug bears with envirofoam used in surfboards.
in Australia it is all imported from America. makes a joke of it and is why i searched for recycled places here. that alone took me multiple conversations and weeks of digging.

Well, keep at it!!!

If you like Grant's shapes email him he will likely send you a bespoke akushape file. He has sent me several, which I am happy to pm you. He is all about the love really friendly chap.

If you have access to those woods you are in a better position than me. I can get as much western red cedar as I want, but the locally grown stuff is really only good for gravel boards or fencing. Paulownia is so expensive, bamboo is ok, but heavy.

Corecork is too soft unless heavily reinforced. Although, it is lovely to work with.
have a look at 'cactus juice' resin. Yes it will increase the density, but if you use it only for boxes I think you will find it similar to a chinook block. I tried with infusion resin and it was a waste of time, barely penetrated. Think cactus juice is like water in viscosity. If you are using a lower density wood like paulownia it will probably work nicely.

Thx for the cactus juice heads up. I have never heard of it.

Yes Grant sent me a design as well. He is super friendly and helpful.
I was thinking. I am building a foil board at the moment. I have made a central box the length of the board. HD foam vac bagged to EPS. The idea is all the force will be taken buy this. Foil box standing area. I can then cut the rails down once I learn. This means I won't have to build another smaller board and by boxes etc again.
Maybe you could use this central box idea for a windsurfer.
A wide double Paulownia stringer. Balsa inserts for mast etc. You could wrap this central part in flax or basalt. Minimal amount of resin used. Then build the board using Grants idea. Vac bagged Paulownia. This also means you don't need all the peel ply etc if you bag flax.
Then in theory most of the board could be recycled as well.

from 2007, a Leading edge whale profile , eco friendly, low impact , said to be reducing drag.

www.surfline.com/surf-news/industry-news/fluid-earth-develops-eco-friendly-fins_12734/

Makani Fins, has several humpback variations.

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Gestalt said..
from what i've read, flax is a rotation crop and requires minimal water compared to other crops. if it's grown organically is even better because there are no pesticides etc involved. so from an eco perspective is consider good.

Standard vary wildly when it comes to ornanic.
I some areas it means it wansnt built on a nukelar waste dump site.

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forceten said..

from 2007, a Leading edge whale profile , eco friendly, low impact , said to be reducing drag.

www.surfline.com/surf-news/industry-news/fluid-earth-develops-eco-friendly-fins_12734/

Makani Fins, has several humpback variations.

Is that your personal fin?

Hank who made those fins stopped trading.

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tarquin1 said..
Yes Grant sent me a design as well. He is super friendly and helpful.
I was thinking. I am building a foil board at the moment. I have made a central box the length of the board. HD foam vac bagged to EPS. The idea is all the force will be taken buy this. Foil box standing area. I can then cut the rails down once I learn. This means I won't have to build another smaller board and by boxes etc again.
Maybe you could use this central box idea for a windsurfer.
A wide double Paulownia stringer. Balsa inserts for mast etc. You could wrap this central part in flax or basalt. Minimal amount of resin used. Then build the board using Grants idea. Vac bagged Paulownia. This also means you don't need all the peel ply etc if you bag flax.
Then in theory most of the board could be recycled as well.

I lile this idea. I think there is something in the core idea.

I glued some foam together from left over bits.
Cut it into 3 parts. HD foam on the sides and top of the middle section. I have just tacked the sides back on for now. Shape the board then cut the sides off and wrap the central part in carbon. Glue the sides back on and finish the board.
Not sure this is the best way to attack it but it is how I am doing it.