I actually plan to make a new board in the same way than the previous one; by laminating plywood, but I want to make it lighter.
What I did the first time was taking out as much wood as I could, leaving outline, stringers and also the feet positions, replacing the rest by polyurethane foam, and finally coating it with fibreglass/epoxy.
What I thought was to take out more wood this time, use polystyrene instead of polyurethane, and use carbon fiber for the bottom of the board and to reinforce the stringers. It's a bit difficult to explain all this without a diagram, but hopefully you can visuallise.
The thing is that I'm not sure if it is going to make a big difference. Does anyone have some info about where/how to use carbon efficiently?
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X

whats the idea behind the ply wood . boats are made of it . if you are going to use wood you would use veeneer which is only .6 mm and when soaked with epoxy will make for a impact strengh mixed with carbon matt maybe two layer around heels and gybe area solid as you will ever need . carbon doesnt make it lighter just stiffer . If you are making a full samwich board you dont need stringers . you should be able to make a 90l board with pads , straps and boxs under 6.5kg if not go back to the drawing board and learn to use the vacum bag method better as lots of weight can be take off

I am making a kiteboard actually, 130cm long, so It wouldn't be very heavy anyway. I wouldn't even try to make a sail board out of plywood! it's far too big! I made the kiteboard I have now in the same way and it is not heavy, but not as light as it could be.


X

why are you all using **** foam? why dont you try corecell way better foam.

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Originally posted by bluejuice

I'd like to use corecell but last time I enquired it was tice the price of divinycell and the closest supplier was in New Zealand, Which made it very uneconomical to ship. Do you know of any suppliers in W.A.

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A few years ago "Fiber Glass & Resin Sales" had a display of it in their counter, but when I enquired about it, they weren't that keen to sell it!! Told me it was too expensive!!!
Is it that much better than Herex or Airex???

decrepit

Whats Herex or Airex? how does it compare with Divinicell? What about corecell whats the diff with that? Anybody in Melbourne suggest any suppliers?. Are any of these the same as 'blue foam'?

quote:

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Originally posted by crashtestdummy

Whats Herex or Airex? how does it compare with Divinicell? What about corecell whats the diff with that? Anybody in Melbourne suggest any suppliers?. Are any of these the same as 'blue foam'?

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This is off the top of my head, so may not be absolutely accurate.
There's 2 types of vinyl foam, cross linked & linear linked. one of them is hard but brittle the other is softer and tougher. Herex & divinycel, are the hard brittle ones. Airex is the tough one, as I think is corecell. Don't know about nomex.
The distributor for Herex & Airex is in NZ, and I think core cell is in Queensland. A Google search should give you all the details.

Blue foam is altogether different, it's extruded polystyrene, basically designed for insulation purposes in damp/wet conditions where the uptake of water would reduce insulation properties.
If you do a google search add "dow chemicals"



decrepit

Thanks Gremi got your email

a.k.a. KA202