by Guest » Wed Aug 04, 2004 3:21 am
You are long physically...and frankly, you're really light, I'm an inch taller than you and weigh 45 pounds more. I imagine at your weight you'd really struggle to dint a board...in any circumstances.
Perhaps your board also has a 6oz glass job on the deck I don't know. I'm not going to debate it with you. You obviouly know more about board design & basic engineering than me from reading on the Web - even though I been surfing for almost twice as long as you've been alive and am a practicing planner with a major in civil engineering...
I'll keep this really simple so you can understand.
Designing & building a surfboard is like anything else that moves through water, or air for that matter. Just like a bicycle racing wheel, a racing yacht or an aeroplane wing. It's just simple physics...
Anything solid that moves will encounter opposing forces- gravity, air resistance, water resistance etc. These opposing forces can be dynamic (moving wave, frothing white-water or wind blowing up the face of the wave for example). Or they can be static, best example being the weight of the surfer pressing down on the board while riding it.
A properly engineered & built item is designed to withstand those loads in normal use. Most have an element of over-engineering built in for safety and life-span.
Now; way back in the 1940's when fiberglass was invented..it was a miracle material. It's was easy to work with, to mould into shapes like boat hulls, reasonably light, it had inherent strength with some flexability, it absorbed vibration and during WWII especially it was especially popular because it was non-magnetic.
In later years (early 1960's) they started making surfboards from it and all was well because the boards were 9-10 feet long and easily 3-4 inches thick. The glass was heavy-weight...those boards were strong.
Now...roll forward four decades, to a time of affordable titanium bicycle frames with life-time gaurentees (Merlin etc), light carbon fiber cycle racing wheels with tested load capacities of 400 kilos (Hed H3's...and they're cheaper than a good surfboard too) carbon-fibre yacht hulls, expony wakeboards, tennis rackets, skis you name it......yet we still we still make surfboards from this 50 year old material called fiberglass.
Why? there are two reasons...
1) Because there is a whole industry thriving & selling you & me about a board per year with the status quo just fine as it is. If you had shares in 3M & Clarke foam...would you want to change things???
2) Most board-makers are small-scale, small business, "lifestyle" shapers, they make boards because they love surfing & taking off work when the surf is good. They do not have the budget to experiment, employ CAD designers or engineers to work on better materials.
Now, boards are way thinner, lighter glassed, more sharply shaped & expected to perform to far higher standards that those boards back in the 1960's.....but they're hindered by the fact we still use foam & fiberglass.
Could a shaper/surfer from the 1960's even imagine what we'd be attempting on boards these days....hell, they'd struggle to even catch a wave on many current boards.
A young-gun surfer on a light board risks breaking a board everytime he does & lands an aerial. Our top pros are so hindered by their equipment and their boards are so stressed from an engineering perspective that a board used by them can measure it's lifespan in weeks.
I cannot name another sport where product failure at this high-level is so prolific....when was the last time you saw a tennis pro break a racket on TV???
Yep, that's me done.
Brent