This may help un blur some of the lines between the types of board: -
SURFTECH & TUFLITE
Tuflite is the actual board by Surftech. It's name explains it best: it's a board that is tuff and light. The building process begins with a the creation of a plug (the form that is used to make a mold for each board), which is recreated from an original shape provided by the shaper. Then:-
1. An EPS blank is blown in the high tolerance mold.
2. A PVC sheet is heated and molded to fit around the EPS blank, void of any seams.
3. The PVC shell is pressed and laminated to the EPS blank with a layer of fiberglass resin.
4. Fin boxes and leash plug are installed and then the blank is sealed.
5. The bottom, rails and deck are all hard laminated then vacuum sealed for curing. This creates the smooth, seamless look and feel of the final product.
6. A very thin sand coat is applied to the board. Then it is sanded, painted and polished.
Lots of famous shapers have tufflite boards like Al Merick & Rusty. The plug is basically taken from one of their hand shaped blanks, laser scanned & created. This is then the mold for 1000's of boards exactly the same.
Pretty much all of these come out of factories in the far east.
It's woth noting that some guys are moving away from the Tuflite name & going it alone. Santa Cruz is one of these, they no longer associate themselves with Tuflite or Surftech.
CUSTOM EPS
EPS is usually open-celled foam which means that it resembles a Styrofoam drinking cup. This means that a blank is literally made up of billions of little beads that are pre-expanded to a particular size, then compressed and fused by steam into block or shape at a specific density. Open-celled refers to the fact that there is space between each bead and, in the past, that has been a big downer for surfers because as soon as a an EPS board was dinged, the foam soaked up water double quick. But now EPS can be engineered to densities similar to polyurethane foam, yet much stronger, and fused to be virtually waterproof.
Basically, these blanks are shaped the same (both by hand and machine) as the traditional polyurethane blanks by Clark and glassed with epoxy. The ending result is a production process that is nearly identical to that of traditional blanks, yet one that yields a lighter, tougher, more lively alternative custom shape.
There are lots of these coming out of the factories in the far east at the moment.
It's also worth noting that both these processes are far removed from the pop out process used to make certain plastic boards.
In one of the earlier threads a guy said "i call a popout any board mass produced (mostly overseas) by machines and sold here"
It's worth noting (again) that a lot of custom PU boards also come out of factories in the far east, such as Bilbo (a very old Newquay name!).
Everything is reflected in the price you are willing to pay & what & how you want to ride really!
With the boards we sell in the shop we find that theres pretty much a market for ewvery type of board! We do a lot of custom boards from British shapers, we also do the custom boards from the far east and of course we do the tufflites as although we do steer well clear of certain "plastic" boards!!!
It's a whole melting pot of different technologies, traditional and new, just gotta decide what for you
Hope this helps!
Mark
ECS
Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 9:23 am
