Curious if this is an issue. cheers.

I don't know how often but I am aware of one guy in Maine (USA) who lost his whole foil and mast assembly when he hit something and the track boxes ripped out of his board. Ouch

Last weekend I Nailed something solid and crusty at 16mph and my Armstrong rig only had some minor scratches on the front and tail wings. I checked the boxes immediately! I had just done a speed run clocking 20.5 mph and must have just missed the obstruction, which happened to be in the middle of a marked channel.

Few of the boys round here had been driving around with their foils on the roof..A mate's hit a low phone wire last month ... was his wife driving.. ( note : not ex-wife ) .. ??

In the water, not often.
But you can rip it out foiling in shallow waters with solid obstructions, if you want.

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Smeee said..
Few of the boys round here had been driving around with their foils on the roof..A mate's hit a low phone wire last month ... was his wife driving.. ( note : not ex-wife ) .. ??

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bummer, I know a guy who took his bike of the roof in a multi story.

You see a couple of posts a year from people who have had the tracks ripped out of the board.

The conventional wisdom is that tracks should be set in slabs of high density foam (usually yellow or green foam) that is locked to the deck and bottom, often with sheets of carbon to reinforce.

The pictures usually look like the one above with lots of white foam and no visible signs of all those construction details. A debate about the skills of the shaper follows.

A lot of foils float, particularly carbon ones, so it would be worth checking that out.

I think it's fairly rare for tracks to fail if properly constructed. Takes some serious force...doesn't seem to come up that often. Poorly constructed, yup, I have had 2 fail.

Early days people sometimes used tethers as a backup to not lose foiling a break. I have go foil...they float!

I am one of the poor b@sterds who had this happen when I was learning to kitefoil and wandered around for ages in the shallow water looking for the foil in vain. Impossible esp when 1/2km from shore.

Luckily I happened to be sporting a GPS watch (now dead) and was able to work out the coordinates where it ripped off. Went out next day with the iphone and found it almost straight away. Happy days. Except for the board.

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Smeee said..
Few of the boys round here had been driving around with their foils on the roof..A mate's hit a low phone wire last month ... was his wife driving.. ( note : not ex-wife ) .. ??

That's really pathetic construction.

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Smeee said..
Few of the boys round here had been driving around with their foils on the roof..A mate's hit a low phone wire last month ... was his wife driving.. ( note : not ex-wife ) .. ??

What a classic Look on the bright side time for a new board. The Armstrong foil still looks ok. Lucky it wasn't an Armstrong board as it would have rip off the roof racks from the car .

My track box failed at the front. I noticed the cracks before I lost the Foil but it was partially due to having the Foil all the way up front. (And not reinforced properly HD foam, carbon...) But still the extra stress (leverage) on the track by not having any track material in front of that point seems like a unnecessary invitation to a weak point. Just a extra few inches of structural support would kept that from happening.
Then again if you hit something hard enough something will have to fail.

Beware the super light foil board ... as the old saying applies, you can have it light, strong, or cheap, choose any two.

If any board builders are on here, might be interesting to chime in on your construction method. I am still using the same old from 4 years ago, cut a big block or two channels an inch around tracks, pour HD foam in, router out tracks. Sometimes adding a layer of divincel on the top surface too. And then 3 extra layers cloth/carbon over top. Strong but heavy. Some people add stringers for even more strength, but so far I've not seen any fails (knock on wood), so this seemed like overkill.

I have also installed a pre-made blocks from blue planet, with the tuttle too, but it weighs about 5lbs and the board is unpleasantly heavy.

I've read reports lately of other people using alternative methods, like installing columns of HD foam or dcell (rather than a big solid block) to connect mast track to top deck, to save material and weight. This is not likely to be quite as strong, but seems solid, so the weight savings may be a reasonable tradeoff.

Very interesting topic.
Amongst shapers, there's a lot of discussion as to what is the best construction.

It is generally accepted that you need a pvc cassette for the tracks to go it.
You have some shapers that use PU pouring foam, but the final result can be unstable or remain to soft so this is not common practice.

connecting from hull to deck: some go from deck to hull with pvc only (so 1 super thick block) at the cost of weight, some use a couple of pvc sheets as beams to connect them with top and bottom, some use only a +- 3,5cm pvc block for the tracks (some put fibre under this block, some don't).

then there's the carbon-fibreglass discussion.

in my experience, I've only seen boards that failed because they didn't have any pvc cassette. Full-block, carbon,. seems to be less important.
For heavy duty (massive jumps and putting the foil in the extreme ends), a full pvc would be best suited imo. Carbon is overaten (fibreglass simply is stronger!! Carbon is stiffer, not stronger and only a couple of grams lighter).
i use a 3.5cm hull pvc block with a strong fibre patch under and over. So far so good.

Common practice in windsurfing that is relevant for foils are mast tracks. Construction is this: eps, strong fibre (glass or carbon) big pvc or PU block, strong fibre, mast track.

I've seen more wingboards fail in other areas.

I have installed the track boxes into 4" of lb. HD foam with 3 layers of carbon fiber covering a large area. Only to watch the owner run the foil aground in the waves at our local. The bottom delamed at the front of the boxes and the boxes broke thru the carbon fiber slightly. Upon removing the carbon in the delamed area the HD foam had torn in half below the boxes. I like the idea of tieing the boxes to the top deck with colums to save weight. I think you may have to tie them together and elongate them. I also like the longer boxes that are coming out which will spead the load. That being said if someone drills it into the bottom hard enough its a big fix. Hope someone has a great way spot a carnage.

Buddy of mine drove with his road bike on top into his garage. His whole roof rack came off the car and was sitting on the driveway with the bike still strapped to it perfectly.

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NicoDC said..
Very interesting topic.
Amongst shapers, there's a lot of discussion as to what is the best construction.

It is generally accepted that you need a pvc cassette for the tracks to go it.
You have some shapers that use PU pouring foam, but the final result can be unstable or remain to soft so this is not common practice.

connecting from hull to deck: some go from deck to hull with pvc only (so 1 super thick block) at the cost of weight, some use a couple of pvc sheets as beams to connect them with top and bottom, some use only a +- 3,5cm pvc block for the tracks (some put fibre under this block, some don't).

then there's the carbon-fibreglass discussion.

in my experience, I've only seen boards that failed because they didn't have any pvc cassette. Full-block, carbon,. seems to be less important.
For heavy duty (massive jumps and putting the foil in the extreme ends), a full pvc would be best suited imo. Carbon is overaten (fibreglass simply is stronger!! Carbon is stiffer, not stronger and only a couple of grams lighter).
i use a 3.5cm hull pvc block with a strong fibre patch under and over. So far so good.

Common practice in windsurfing that is relevant for foils are mast tracks. Construction is this: eps, strong fibre (glass or carbon) big pvc or PU block, strong fibre, mast track.

I've seen more wingboards fail in other areas.

IMO, shapers tend to use the HD cassettes because they work AND are easy....one router template and they're done. They aren't perfect though, the straight edges and bonding of vertical surfaces of very hard and very soft foam set them up for shear and hinging unless the area outside of the boxes a very stiff....ie multiple layers of differently biased carbon.

I use pour foam, very dense... again pros and cons.

Pros would be that you can expand the footprint of the "cassette" and engineer the shape to be round, have legs or whatever you want so as to spread the stress a bit. You can pour into undercuts. Can even pour it around stringers etc. Ditto with deck anchoring pillars.

Cons, it's not as easy to mix and pour consistently as one would hope. If multiple pours happen, it can striate horizontally and that gives the foam a weaker layer of stuck together foam to break along. It exotherms too, and in sufficient volume it's hot enough to bugger up the touching edges of EPS...which you'll never see until you dig it out.

To be really sure you need to layer fibre (hopefully carbon) in 0*, 45* and 90* orientation to get the most stiffness possible, some distance outside the perimeter of the foam and feather the edges or use a roundish footprint so it doesn't leave a hinge. If you're using carbon, probably best to bag it as that gets the best from the material and stops pooling of resin around the foil tracks.

I've only broken one, that was from a nuclear hit on a sandbar at speed..but it didn't come out, took a couple of months to get sloppy.

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Clamsmasha said..
I use pour foam, very dense... again pros and cons.

You may want to use Gorilla glue, whipped up with a bit of water. A lot of people seem to have good results as it sticks very well and do not create a lot of heat.

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colas said..

Clamsmasha said..
I use pour foam, very dense... again pros and cons.

You may want to use Gorilla glue, whipped up with a bit of water. A lot of people seem to have good results as it sticks very well and do not create a lot of heat.

Hi Colas, the foam is is poured and cures in situ. It forms it own extremely sticky bond with a bit of compression for good measure.

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Clamsmasha said..

colas said..

Clamsmasha said..
I use pour foam, very dense... again pros and cons.

You may want to use Gorilla glue, whipped up with a bit of water. A lot of people seem to have good results as it sticks very well and do not create a lot of heat.

Hi Colas, the foam is is poured and cures in situ. It forms it own extremely sticky bond with a bit of compression for good measure.

I believe G Glue is the same PU foam, just activated by water rather than 2-part. The 2-part foam can have varied density, I am not sure what density GG is, but maybe 8-10lb? Also don't know if GG has similar exotherm issues in larger uses ... I am a big fan of GG, though I have only used for small fills.

I have used pour PU foam in several pours to avoid exotherm. I haven't had the striations you suggest clams, but that certainly seems possible....thinking about it, I didn't rough it up between pours, would be better grip if removed that hard shiny finish it gets.

Anyways, lots of ways to skin this cat, thanks everyone for posting all the new ideas.