We at FlyBoy Wakesurf love the responsiveness of lightweight surf-style boards. They are amazing to surf, but they’re too easily marred by heel dents and rail dings. We hate having to be gentle with our boards, so we’ve developed a lightweight model that virtually eliminates dings and dents. That means you no longer must choose between the rugged 8-pound monster that doesn’t ding and the 4-pound board that’s damaged the moment you use it.
We’ve created a lightweight board with amazing flex and rebound properties for wakesurfing, and it is extremely ding resistant. FlyBoy Wakesurf’s new composite-sandwich construction method is similar to that used on custom windsurf boards. It is tougher and lighter than epoxy wakesurf boards. Each is handmade one by one. This labor-intensive method uses a mix of exotic materials, which makes the boards costly to produce. But you will be amazed how fantastic these boards ride, and you’ll be impressed by the punishment they can take. Take off the kid gloves!
Our composite construction combines foam of different densities sandwiched with fiberglass to optimize strength and durability while remaining light. We start with an expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam core that’s very lightweight. This core holds the board’s inner shape, and then higher-density foam and fiberglass gets wrapped around it for strength. The core’s low density helps dampen energy, which reduces failure during construction. Here’s another key feature: There is NO stringer down the middle of the board. This gives it a new exciting feel in rebound and pop.
Wrapping the EPS core is a fiberglass cloth. This provides the structural wall for the composite sandwich. The cloth adhered to both the inner core and the higher-density outer skin. Since the core is fully wrapped with this fiberglass, it’s actually a fiberglass board within a board.
Our high-density closed-cell foam external skin is our proprietary secret, but it’s what gives this board its primary strength. This very durable foam can be heated to form any curve. Despite its strength, this foam is NOT brittle, and it makes an ideal inner layer to support fiberglass. This 3-millimeter-thick wrap around the core makes the exterior as hard as a toolbox.
The outer-fiberglass skin supplies the next element in the construction process. Putting a strong hard layer on both sides of the high-density external foam completes the sandwich.
High-quality composite construction requires many rules be followed. Example: If you double the core’s thickness, you quadruple the structure’s stiffness. That basically means the wall thickness provides the stiffness, while the fiberglass layers provide the strength.
Using these construction elements makes it possible to achieve a perfect balance between strength and rebound in a very lightweight and durable package. Because the high-density outer-core foam can handle a lot of flex, it benefits the rider. The board can bend a lot without internal failure because the high-density foam always wants to return to its original shape. With the aid of the fiberglass, it provides a great rebound property that flexes under pressure and springs back to into shape without any damage.
Regular fiberglass structures, by contrast, lose strength and rebound ability every time they get flexed. So little by little they fail. That’s what happens to a regular wakesurf board when it “looses its new board feel.” Our composite sandwich construction, however, greatly reduces that effect.
Besides using more expensive exotic materials – like the specialized internal fiberglass, carbon-wrapped rails and high-density foam skin – our boards are very labor-intensive to make. Each must be repeatedly hand shaped before completion.
First, the low-density core must be shaped to smaller specifications to compensate for the thickness of the high-density foam skin and fiberglass that gets wrapped around it. This takes time and lots of measuring to get right.
Then the board gets fiberglassed and wrapped with the high-density foam skin. That usually requires a couple trips into a vacuum bag and repeated reshaping to produce a core in the general shape of the finished board.
Next, the blank must be fully shaped to the board’s final specifications. The stronger outer high-density foam layer is harder to shape because of its density. It takes as much time to shape as a regular surfboard blank from scratch.
Finally, the outer fiberglass is applied. Everything is put into the vacuum bag twice, for both the top and the bottom layers. The associated peel ply and breathing materials extract all unwanted resin. Then it’s heated until cured. The board must be fine sanded before it’s prepped for paint.
A composite sandwich board typically requires about four-times more labor than a regular epoxy wakesurf board. While that’s a lot more work, the finished product is second to none. That is why FlyBoy is the only one that does this construction. It’s simply not as profitable as slapping together a stringered blank or combining materials in a pop-out mold.
- Then a computer pre-shaped low-density EPS foam core is compressed inside before the mold is clamped together until cured. After curing, the top and bottom molds are removed, and the rail is strengthened with fiberglass because the thin foam and fiberglass layers are not continuous from the top through to the bottom. It’s then sanded and painted.
While this method reduces labor and produces a higher-quality construction product, it has a couple drawbacks. Being a mold, all the resin put inside stays in the mold, unlike the FlyBoy Wakesurf method that uses a vacuum to pull away all excess resin from the structure. Sometimes in the mold method the core is not fully wrapped in the high-density foam skin shell, so there is a weak point along the rails where the join is made. To strengthen this fault, a lot of fiberglass is applied there, which stiffens the board and kills some of the feel.
The quality of molded boards range from excellent to poor, with rail splits and faulty lamination occurring at the low end of the scale. This is the drawback from the mass-production process. In the hand-shaped process used by FlyBoy Wakesurf, which makes boards from the inside out, all imperfections are apparent and corrected by experience craftsmen before construction continues to the next step.
FlyBoy Wakesurf boards are 100% handcrafted in the USA, this by itself drives costs up, manufacturing in Asia doesn’t require meeting the stringent environmental standards required in the USA – it’s even stricter here in California where all FlyBoy Wakesurf boards are manufactured. We take pride in American craftsmanship and for doing our small part to aid the economy AND keep jobs here in the good old USA.
Yes, these custom boards are expensive, but you get the best board construction technology available today.
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May 1, 2010 at 9:50 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
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May 1, 2010 at 10:55 am (UTC -7) Link to this comment
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