Description History Advantages

Surfboards have been made out of all kinds of materials over the years; solid wood, chambered wood, polyurethane foam, hollow wood, aluminum honeycomb, hollow carbon fiber, expanded polystyrene, extruded polystrene and on and on. Adhesives have almost always been either polyester or epoxy based. Our boards are composite boards and use combinations that exploit the strengths of a given material, while using a different part of the composite to compensate for the weaknesses. Fiberglass is heavy, but strong. EPS is light, but weak. You get the idea.

Admittedly, most of the people involved in the group first had the lightbulb turn on while reading Bert Berger's formative post at Swaylocks on vacuum forming surfboards in 2005. Since that time, group members have brought their wealth of experiences; including assembly of composite structures in other arenas (boats, snowboards, furniture, jewellery and wooden bows, among others), as well as their expertise in designing and building traditional (polyester over polyurethane) surfboards to the fold to bring us to where we are now; creating a product that will perform at least as well as a brand new polyurethane/polyester surfboard, without the rapid performance deterioration observed in the more traditional construction.

In all reality, our construction methods are not new; the windsurfing crowd has been making composite boards since the mid-80's with very positive results; technology that was eventually passed on to Cobra, by (at the time) Seatrend shaper Randy French (now Surftech). Gary Young has been crafting Bamboo encased EPS surfboards since the 70's. Bert Berger's Sunova label has been developing balsa based composite surfboards for more than a decade. We differ in our approach; vast, shared experiences, using different materials to enhance performance rather than ease production. As surfers, we've identified what *works* and shared our results for others in the group to duplicate, comment on and enhance. We've developed different construction protocols depending on the board's intended use, allowing you, the customer, to develop a quiver of boards, specifically designed for the waves you'll encounter, that should last immeasurably longer than a similar quiver of pu/pe boards.