Can someone help me understand board construction before I purchase my next board? I have two boards currently. The first is a 2021 JP Australia, X foil. I love this board, but the outside seems to be as fragile as an egg shell. It occasionally gets small dings, even though I baby the board. Online I see it is a high density PVC sandwich construction. This is supposed to be very durable.
My second board is a Quatro Wing drifter I bought used. I think it is probably from 2022. Construction is a lightweight EPS foam block wrapped in a combination of carbon and glass laminates. Online I see this should not be as durable as the JP Australia board’s PVC sandwich, but I’ve definitely been rougher with this board and there are no dings at all. So my experience is not matching up with what I’m reading online and I’d like to make sure my next board is not going to ding so easily.
I can’t buy new boards very often, so I need them to last several years.

Less material also means lighter. You'll probably find your JP wing board feel nice and light. A heavier board might last longer, or at least be a bit less sensitive to dings, but you might not enjoy the feeling so something to keep in mind.

Sandwich should theoretically be better, offering two layers of protection and better strength. Whether it really is in practice depends on the implementation, because often the individual laminate layers will be very thin to keep weight down.

If the laminate is light fabric, thin and full of pinholes because it has had too much resin pulled out, then maybe covered in a thick layer filler to make it cosmetically good before paint then will it be better? A well implemented single skin is likely to have more layers of cloth and therefore be a bit tougher.

I'm maybe a bit biased by my experience with my gong PVC carbon sandwich board. Cracked both layers in several places with impacts from knee or wing handle and the board took on water. The outer laminate is one light layer of carbon. Water also got between the thick filler layer and the laminate, and all the paint bubbled up. So I've had to strip the whole thing of paint thick filler, patch up the cracks, add some glass to reinforce the rails, and seal it with epoxy filler coat.

^^^ yes for Sunova but not for all wood laminate boards. For example the first purple coloured Fanatic that had the wood stop short of the upper rail (as vac bagging around that curve is hard) and they all crack badly on the top of the rail. I’ve repaired heaps of them.


Wood also causes huge water travel if you ding and ignore it. Bamboo is the worst. So there are no absolutes here, it has to be done right. I use pine a lot in my windsurf and kite boards for impact resistance.


it’s not hard to get epoxy to bond to XPS. the issue is it off gassing with heat or dings cracking the foam underneath, causing gas to release and it delaminates badly. (Appletree claim to have fixed that with a new XPS made for them)