SURFBOARD CONSTRUCTION

Fiberglass Lamination Classic Feel with Enhanced Response Hand-Crafted Thunderbolt Silver is a surfboard construction that gives you the most classic riding feel. The laminate uses 6oz + 6oz fiberglass on the deck and 6oz + 4oz fiberglass on the bottom, making itheavier than other constructions. This increases the feeling ofglide and cruise, and enables traditional riding. Of course, it has the performance and flex of Thunderbolt, and so delicate board control such as quick pivot turn and setup in the wave pocket is easy. You can enjoy old-school log riding such as hang five and hang ten on small wave, and...

PU boards have been around since 1957, when a resin salesman walked into the surf shop owned by Hobie Alter and handed him a chunk of polyurethane foam for the first time. Before that, cutting-edge surfboards were made out of balsa wood, with a hard, plastic shell made of fiberglass and polyester resin. Balsa had a number of advantages, not the least of which was how light and buoyant it was. It had been adopted from airplane wing technology and adapted to the ocean, and for most of the 1950s was the universally accepted standard for surfboards. But when Hobie...

DoubleDart Surfboard Construction from …Lost Carbon fiber surfboards are all the rage, but that wasn’t always the case. In fact, a short 10 years ago, there were hardly any carbon boards available. …Lost was one of the first surfboard companies to offer a full-deck carbon fiber construction offer with it’s BlackDart construction, and in many ways helped to usher in the current era of hyper-futuristic board construction. And now that the rest of the world has caught up and there are dozens of carbon fiber boards available from various brands, …Lost has upped their game once again with a refined...

Helium Technology Surfboards A look inside: The Seaside built in Helium Tech – an ultralight EPS foam core with flex controlled in the rail from nose to tail; a blend of paulownia and balsa wood. Aerospace composite deckskins make you feel like you’re creating footwells in the deck, but it often looks new even after a month of surfing. Ridden by everyone from Kellly Slater and Stuey Kennedy and Pacha Light. It’s our lightest surfboard ever, shaped from a 0.8 pound EPS  blank with flex controlled at the rails similar to Timbertek.  When describing Helium compared to LFT in his Gamma shape, Kelly Slater says “On...

Black Sheep Built Matt Biolos on Black Sheep Built Surfboards   …Lost has always been the black sheep of the surfboard industry, intentionally going against the grain to create boards that are fun and functional, rather than trendy. Ironically, that “no cares given” approach and commitment to boards that ride as well as they look has led to …Lost being one of the trendiest and most popular board brands on the market. But Matt Biolos’ committed following of world-class team riders and loyal customers hasn’t made him any less of a black sheep, which is why …Lost’s latest board construction process...

…Lost’s LightSpeed       Light Speed is …Lost’s proprietary construction process for building the world’s most advanced surfboards. Combining lightweight EPS foam, high-strength epoxy resin, Rapid-Reflex carbon fiber and Innegra fibers that help dampen vibrations, Light Speed boards are extremely lightweight, fast down the line, and proven through thousands of hours of R&D by the world’s best shapers and surfers. The proprietary fiberglass blend and woven carbon fiber adds strength and pop, loading up under the feet and providing a lively feel through turns, while the two aligned center exo-stringers on both the deck and bottom of the board...

Surfboard Construction Guide I get the same question every day, “What is the difference between and epoxy board and a fiberglass board?”  First of all, all surfboards have fiberglass. Epoxy is just different type of resin. It is questions like this that made me realize the consumer really has no idea what they are buying.  I made up this list of types of surfboard construction to help customers understand the different types of construction.   PU or polyurethane production is traditional surfboard construction. This was started in the early 60s and to this day is an industry standard.  It’s just one...

Firewire’s I-bolic Construction   Firewire has spent the past year innovating newer, better construction processes for its wide range of boards—which is pretty impressive, since it already led the industry in futuristic tech. The best option is the Ibolic Construction, which replaces the LFT construction. Ibolic was designed around the fact that many of Firewire’s more futuristic shapes had pretty complex bottom contours, particularly the vee quad concave bottom used on many of Tomo’s boards. This “performance hull” contour is quite involved and is difficult to glass with a bottom skin, which was the typical process used for the LFT...

Surfboard Construction Guide: What is the difference between an epoxy board and a fiberglass board? I get the same question every day, “What is the difference between and epoxy board and a fiberglass board?”  First of all, all surf boards have fiberglass.  Epoxy is just different type of resin.  It is questions like this that made me realize the consumer really has no idea what they are buying.  I made up this list of types of surfboard construction to help customers understand the different types of construction. (1) PU or polyurethane production is traditional surfboard construction.   This was started in the early...

WHAT IS HYFI 2.0? Our unparalleled epoxy technology, HYFI, is a unique multi-layer construction that feels like nothing else out there. Think of it as a futuristic exoskeleton for a surfboard that allows it to be lighter and stronger than ever before, while still maintaining the ideal spring-loaded flex for maximum performance. Now, in the last 5 years since it was first released, we’ve taken everything learned to improve each aspect – the performance, flex, speed, materials used and manufacturing processes.   View this post on Instagram A post shared by Hawaiian South Shore Surf Shop (@hwnsouthshore)   SCALED ENGINEERING...

Cutting-Edge Combination of Nature and Technology When most people think of Firewire, they think of TIMBERTEK. These are the brown, wooden-decked surfboards that first put the company on the map. Combining lightweight EPS blanks with a laminated wooden skin and proprietary parabolic rails, these boards look good and perform great. They are strong, lightweight, and snappy, utilizing the strength of paulownia wood to supplement the strength and flex of the EPS foam and epoxy resin. Paulownia is a fast-growing tree that produces strong, light timber, perfect for use in surfboard construction. By utilizing this wood in their construction process, Firewire...

Tell Us About The Thunderbolt  Surfboards You’ve Ridden... Thunderbolt. Well Thunderbolt came into my life about five years ago when Mr. Sumitomo, Yu Sumitomo gave me a phone call that began my journey with the Thunderbolt team. A good friend of mine that I’ve surfed professional longboards with for years, Kapono Nahina, gave me the original call that told me I needed to try this construction. I went to Hawaiian South Shore and that’s when I started my relationship with Dave. His awesome staff down there set me up and I tried my first Thunderbolt Harley Ingleby HIHP model designed by Billy Tolhurst. It changed...

…Lost’s C4 Board Construction Along with a wide variety of fun, creative shapes, Matt Biolos and the team at …Lost  have revolutionized the surfboard industry with their C4 construction process. C4 boards are built with sustainably harvested cork that adds extra strength and dampens wind chatter and high-speed vibrations, yet maintains the lightweight feel of a modern shortboard. These composite boards use a 1.5-pound EPS foam core wrapped with the harvested cork and layers of fiberglass, adding tensile strength to the deck without creating the flicky feel that a lot of epoxy boards suffer from. The best part is that...

    Mark Nelson founded Carve Sports, Inc. / VERITAS SURFCRAFT in 2014.  Since that time, Mark and his team have partnered with Yu Sumitomo of Thunderbolt Technologies, and elite longboard surfers including CJ Nelson, Harley Ingleby, Ben Skinner, Taylor Jensen and Kai Sallas.  Together with their shapers, this team has created exceptional lineups of high performance and classic longboards and fun shapes and established distribution of their boards in most major surf markets around the world.  Brands include CJ Nelson Designs, Harley Ingleby Series by Tolhurst Surfboards, SkinDog Surfboards, Flying Diamonds Fins, Taylor Jensen Series and Kai Sallas Longboard...

Firewire is known for leading the surf industry in terms of modern, high-tech board construction, and recently they have added a number of different construction options to their boards. Two of the most popular—LFT and Helium—provide similar all-around benefits such as light weight and durability, but also have their own specific advantages, depending what you are looking to do on your board. Rob Machado has been designing boards for Firewire for the past few years, and has a lot of experience on both types of construction. He recently did a little video to explain the difference between the two, and...

WHAT IS HYFI? Our unparalleled epoxy technology, HYFI, is a unique multi-layer construction that feels like nothing else out there. Think of it as a futuristic exoskeleton for a surfboard that allows it to be lighter and stronger than ever before, while still maintaining the ideal spring-loaded flex for maximum performance. Jason Stevenson and his JS label (famous for the tractor logo) have been producing some of the most high-performance surfboards on the planet for more than two decades. No one questions the design elements of these boards, and a number of guys on the world tour ride them, including...

Helium Hydroshort  California’s Timmy Reyes has been a free surfing fixture for two decades. From his young days as an up-and-coming grom to his current legend status as a feral explorer of frigid barrels, Timmy has been shaping surf culture since he was an adolescent, and his edits continue to get us pumped up to drive a bit farther, pull on some rubber, and have an adventure. As it turns out, Timmy Reyes is influential in the surfboard design realm as well. Timmy got on one of Kelly Slater’s Hydroshorts (made by Tomo) a few years back, built in Firewire’s LFT...

There are few board designs that have stranger stories than the …Lost Rocket. Back in the mid-2000s, Shane Beschen needed a board for his mini-grom Noah, and together with fellow …Lost pro surfer and shaper Noah Budroe scraped a broken blank into a straight-railed, low-entry rocker, wide-tailed, super-concaved speed demon. But then Shane ended up borrowing the board from his son, and found that the thing went ballistic. He brought the design to …Lost, where the design team tweaked it a bit and created what came to be called the Rocket—one of the most popular boards of the late 2000s....