Ok I know surftechs have been discussed to death but has anyone had any experience with custom epoxys, particularly performance longboards?
I'm talking complete custom here, hand shaped with stringer etc.

Could the lack of weight be balanced by getting some heavier glassing thus keeping the all important momentum?

I'm considering it for the durability really rather than having it light so I can flick it around.

Any input appreciated,

There a plenty of polyester glassed boards that have stood the test of time.

Chapter longboards last.

I got my board glassed extra heavy and bar one encounter with a reef it's in good nick after 3 years of abuse. It's heavy though.

I'm not sold on epoxy, it's more expensive, if you used a polystyrene blank any dings will soak up water like a sponge. If you ding it you need a different repair kit....

I'd got with a standard blank with two 6 oz layer on both sides and one decent stringer plus a nose and tail block. Homeblown blanks appear to get less pressure dings.

owned a high performance epoxy longboard from lanny schuler in oregon for about four months.... only sold it so i could get a fish and am now wanting to get another as a complement to my heavy single fin.

overall it weighted about as much as your average polyester shortboard. this one was real high performance and well just a lot of fun.... even managed to get on the nose with it.....

finally to durability, lanny's boards are great.... you can throw them off a house and still not have a ding.... the only times i have put a ding in one of his boards are a) when the board came of the car at 50 mph and when i slammed into some really pointy rocks of a reef. if you notice the theme it is puncture damage is bad, but blunt trauma will not affect the board. this brings up ding repair. epoxy kits are not that hard to find, but that said lanny was actually telling me that he likes using polyester resin mixed really hot to do some repairs on his boards since he gets this melted bond on the injury. that said he is a bit of a mad scientist and well this repair approach maybe should not be attempted on your own.



ps i ride one of his thrusters when it is real good, and well it is a great board too...just which i encounter waves that required it more often.

If your looking for a custom expoxy, it could be well worth your while to talk to Marcus in castle, he is glassing for Mervin now, but Marcus is a genius with epoxy in his own right.

(That, and if you could talk Alan O Reardon into doing a longboard for you, you would get something VERY pretty. I saw NatDatYoungs new 6'5'' the other week, and the better half, who doesn't even surf was passing comments on how good it looked)

In regards to the merits of epoxy they seem to be growing in number, you have a much more control over the density of foam so you can still get a heaver board(if thats what your looking for), its more environmentally friendly and a lot safer to work with.

Personaly, I still like the idea of a poly longboard and i love the look of volan glass, but i would like to try a epoxy perimeter stringered fireball if bob ever did feel so inclined and if I was buying a shortboard, I dont think there's anyone else in the country who could do a job like alan.

Well I had a talk to a shaper yesterday and he kinda steered me away from the epoxy (for my purposes anyway), even though the company he works for are doing a big hard sell on them.

Talking specifically about performance longboards, he reckoned the extra float was a disadvantage in bigger stuff. It would be possible to have it super thinned out to counter act this but he said if you were doing this then you would have to wonder about why you were going with epoxy in the first place.

It seems small clean waves are where the epoxy boards are at their best.

He also mentioned that white epoxys go yellow pretty quick.