A little history about what motivated me to start developing composite sandwich technology for wakesurf boards. Back in 2008, I was riding for The Walker Project and had won several contests, including the Texas State Wakesurf Championships. Then the World Wakesurf Championships was approaching and my perimeter stringered board broke after about 3 months and the weekend before that contest. We did a quick fix that evening, but it just didn’t perform like it did in the previous 3 months.
Here are some pictures of what I am talking about with regard to heel dents. You can see the huge mess where the fiberglass ripped along the perimeter stringer on the left side of the board.
A huge mess, huh? The perimeter stringers really seemed to work well with that board, BUT, due to the proximity of the stringer at the heel of the rear foot, after a few landings from aerials, the deck fiberglass ripped and the board was history!
So we looked at deck patches of extra fiberglass – that made the boards heavy and they lost their pop. Then deck patches of Carbon Fiber and those boards were just dead. Stringerless boards didn’t seem to work at all for us. Greg Loehr and Warvel Surf Foam developed the WMD compsand, which is similar to what we’ve done, but they used a bamboo laminate on the deck to avoid the heel dents! BUT, they stopped production almost as quickly as they started. Then we started messing around with composite sandwich construction. The composite sandwich that we use at FlyBoy Wakesurf is super stiff, but THAT is a wonderful attribute for behind the boat. The borads still flex, it’s just that the rebound is QUICK, much quicker than non-sandwich construction. What we found, is that with our small wakes, that super quick rebound offered just perfect POP off the lip.
What the composite sandwich construction also offered is light weight and ruggedness. The deck skin is 5# density foam, almost twice the density of the foam typically used in wakesurf construction, but also, because we engineered the construction appropriately, the boards are light – 4 pounds before fins and traction.
Here are some comparable photos of the prototype board that has been ridden for about a year. Not a single heel dent after repeated aerial landings. What a difference the enegineering made!
Huge difference, right? The basic concept of the composite sandwich is what makes the difference. Windsurf boards, which undergo much larger stresses than a wakesurf board, have been using this technology for years. Just one last set of photos so that you can see the difference side by side. The top board with the huge heel dent is EPS and fiberglass, the bottom picture with NO HEEL DENTS is the FlyBoy Wakesurf – James Walker Signature model, composite sandwich construction.
We’re really excited about this construction, not only because it gives us the most responsive ride we’ve ever experienced, due in part to it’s light weight and exceptionally fast rebound, but also because it’s extremely rugged – heel dents and catastrophes like we experienced before the WWSC in ’08 are a thing of the past! AND FlyBoy Wakesurf is the only manufacturer to currently offer this robust and resposnive construction, we utilize carbon wrapped rails to effect a the responsiveness of a perimeter stringer and the high density foam on the rails, adds perimeter weighting and ding resistance. The end result is unparralleled performance.
Mail this post
May 10th, 2010 at 12:14 am
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Flyboy Wakesurfing and Flyboy Wakesurfing, Flyboy Wakesurfing. Flyboy Wakesurfing said: Wakesurf Boards: eleminating heel dents http://shar.es/m6FD5 [...]
May 10th, 2010 at 8:44 am
nice post!
May 10th, 2010 at 1:12 pm
Sorry for the huge review, but I’m really loving the new Zune, and hope this, as well as the excellent reviews some other people have written, will help you decide if it’s the right choice for you.
May 11th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
Took me time to read all the comments, but I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be Very helpful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here It’s always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained I’m sure you had fun writing this article.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:28 am
Wonderful website, I recently came across it and I am already a fan. I just dropped thirty pounds in 30 days, and I am excited to share my weight loss success with as many people as possible. If I can lose weight then any one can. Whatever you do, never give up and you WILL accomplish all your weight loss goals!
May 13th, 2010 at 3:52 am
I must say, I enjoy reading your blog. Maybe you could let me know how I can bookmark it ? I feel I should let you know I found your page through Bing.
May 19th, 2010 at 3:21 am
I would like to express my appreciation for your post. That’s really great to know that there are such people like you who do their job very well and with such enthusiasm.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:56 pm
Thanks for a great post and interesting comments. I found this post while surfing the web for Thanks for sharing this article.
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Fantatic job here. I really enjoyed what you had to say. Keep going because you definitely bring a new voice to this subject. Not many people would say what youve said and still make it interesting. Well, at least Im interested.
May 23rd, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Fantatic blog and precise info. You raise many questions in my mind; you wrote an excellent post, but it is also mind provoking, and I will have to ponder it some more.
May 25th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
Only want to say your article is as tonishing. The lucidity in your post is simply spectacular and i can take for granted you are an expert on this subject. Well with your permission allow me to grab your rss feed to keep up to date with succeeding post. Thanks a million and please keep up the good work.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:24 am
i stumbled on to this blog by chance but im glad I did click. You definitely answered all the questions I’ve been dying to answer
May 27th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
[...] suseptible to this, but all boards, if hit hard enough, can develop dings and holes. Even the FlyBoy Wakesurf Board in Composite Sandwich can get a hole punctured into it, even though it’s resitant to heel [...]
May 27th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
[...] suseptible to this, but all boards, if hit hard enough, can develop dings and holes. Even the FlyBoy Wakesurf Board in Composite Sandwich construction can get a hole punctured into it, even though it’s [...]
May 31st, 2010 at 4:18 pm
This is my first time i visit here. I found so many interesting stuff in your blog especially its discussion. From the tons of comments on your articles, I guess I am not the only one having all the enjoyment here! keep up the good work.
June 2nd, 2010 at 6:36 pm
This post was very nicely written, and it also contains a lot of useful facts. I appreciated your professional manner of writing this post. Thanks, you have made it easy for me to understand.
June 3rd, 2010 at 1:26 am
Its very informative and interesting article.all the points are very useful. Simple but very effective writing. Thanks for sharing such a nice post.
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:31 am
I was just browsing for relevant blog posts for my project research and I happened to stumble upon yours. Thanks for the useful information!
June 8th, 2010 at 12:40 pm
Interesting… very interesting.
June 28th, 2010 at 5:56 pm
Very informative article… Looking forward for more articles on your blog