Saturday, April 21, 2007

still sidelined

Good thing there are no waves for me to miss.

One of my friends is going to be buying an epoxy board and I've been seeing them a lot lately. You can tell because the colors look a little dull. I wonder if the boards will ever come out looking like the old polyurethane boards. More importantly, is there a performance difference?

When they first came out, people were saying it didn't have quite the same feel, in a negative way, compared to the old foam boards. The sensitivity or flex was gone. They are cheaper and more resilient than the old boards, but they don't look quite as nice. I hear they are super light as well. Lots of pros and cons.

Anyone care to comment?

I'm waiting for my surfing mentor to pick up one up. He totally surfs the hell out of his foam boards that they fall apart (delamination) after a couple of seasons. He treats his boards really well, too, except for the abuse they go through from the turns and the kick outs.

I'm not going to be buying a board anytime soon, but will be rehabbing an old board. It has some delamination rework done to it, but I think I'll try to find someone to strip it and reglass the whole board. This is after I get my tax refund back and then I'll have to go find someone to do the glass work. If anyone knows someone in Orange County or LA County, please forward me their contact info.

1 Comments:

Blogger Kim said...

I am a big fan of both epoxy boards and fiberglass ones. I do think it's like comparing Hondas to Mercedes however.

With epoxy, you don't worry about much...not about looks (it knows it ain't too pretty), not for catching waves, and certainly not if you happen to drop it down the stairs, or god forbid, run it over. They're rough and tumble beaters.

Fiberglass though, they require a bit more love. But they're worth it. And it shows. And of course, you can feel that difference in the ride too.

I think it may depend on how hard you are on things (I'm a thrasher) and how much you care about aesthetics and capturing that classic soulfulness in surfing.

Really, you just gotta try it and see. I rather like the difference in feel upon catching a wave with epoxy, but many others feel, not so much. I'm curious what your take will be.

10:29 PM  

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Clerks II - July 21, 2006