old grom wrote:ric - stretching this topic a bit - but what does this say to you about the ideal glass job to get if you want your custom to be a keeper? My brother just had a 4X4X4 glassed off the rack Bourton (which he loved in terms of shape and how it went) - develop a crease about 50 cm long after about 5 weeks - we noticed it and comented that that was crap after a short period but thought it was cosmetic. It snapped in half a couple of weeks later in pretty weak conditions.
In your experiance - how much does a stronger glass job protect from this? Do you glass your own boards strong?
O.Grom, Dino is 100% right, a good glass job won’t help bad foam. Keep in mind though what I am talking about, the ingress of water, has little or perhaps nothing to do with foam. Whether EPS, in the case of the fiberflex is more of a sponge I don’t know, but believe it CAN be. Regardless, water won’t discriminate, it will screw good foam or bad - PU or EPS although the development continues. There are some closed cell foams now that supposedly only absorb less than 1% but they tend to be sheet foams so you won’t see those unless you get a compsand style board and I think the TL2s are particularly non-absorbent if you like cream boards.
4x4x4 is bog standard, any board irrespective of foam, stringer or glass job can and will crease and break under the right (wrong) circumstances.
My current board is stringer-less, but has Stretch style deck channels but otherwise glassed the same as your brother’s board. I have felt it flexing in my hands when duck diving in some unfortunate situations, it is still very intact. Glassed with epoxy laminate (more flexible), and poly filler. Deck is taking a pounding at the back, but I put that down to the foam used and my initial get-up style. It has however lead me to an idea about reinforcing boards, semi-retrospectively.
I am of the opinion a stringer may not help as much as we like to think and Midget has written some interesting comments on this in the past (Surfblanks) as in his opinion and it makes sense, it will concentrate the energy in a weak spot and this pertains to existing damage or even compressions, hence your brother’s issue with the crease and eventual snap. Even the slightest rail crack will potentially fail as it is already compromised. Stringers make a board easier to shape and enable the forming of a rocker during glue-up, other than that you are taking one piece of foam and compromising it by cutting it in half.
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