Varial Foam
Only second hand experience, which is: expensive; easy to work with; smells like a chemical apocalypse when sanded; very strong.
I'm curious about it, but thn I'm also curious about X-Core and that's what I reckon my next board will be.
It's funny you mention the chemical smell, in this surfing life review they claim exactly the opposite.....
http://www.surfinglife.com.au/news/sl-news/14722-the-world-s-sweetest-sm...
One shaper commented after shaping a Varial blank his shaping bay smelt like he dropped 100 bottles of vodka in there.
Ask webby, FR. Just saw one on his Instagram.
yeah, will do LD. I saw that too.
Just wondered whether anyone here had any experience of surfing one.
Here's my question direct to Parker Borneman from Varial foam:
Will the smell of Varial foam be improved? A shaper I know had an olfactory nightmare after shaping a Varial blank!
Our foam does have a very unique smell which is due to our blowing agent. We use highly engineered materials in our entire process to create our foam, and the alcohol-based blowing agent isn’t something we can replace if we want to continue to make consistent, uniform blanks. We recommend using proper respirators which can filter organic vapors, but our foam is non-hazardous to work with.
Many shapers like the smell of it, so I guess it’s a personal preference.
Josh Dowling posted on Swaylocks about Varial material and PMI.
Eric Arakawa tried them and him and the guys in the shaping room , all got sick. He also mentioned that the tail and nose rocker changed from the shaping to the finished board.
hmmm....hard to make sense of so much conflicting info.
seems John Carper made a stack of boards for Dorian including the guns he rode at Jaws last winter with outstanding results but others have had very different outcomes.
Nick Carroll writes a piece making specific mention(in fact the premise of the article) of the non-chemical, benign smell and others say the foam is like a chemical apocalypse.
Hard to know what to think.
Seems Italo Ferreira has no problems on them...
Anyway, just curious because it seem a bit of a solution to the problem of durability without going to EPS, and composite construction .
Might need a bit of ventilation in the shaping bay . Good on varial blanks for trying to make a quality blank . Thanks for the tips sharkman thats why these forums are good value
As I understand it the blanks are flat rectangular blocks of foam, they are then heated and the rocker is bent into them. It wouldn't surprise me if the shape was altered through machining especially if it was not supported properly. love the idea of a better foam but the price is astronomical!
adds another 175-200 bucks to a board?
So, if standard lamination it would still be cheaper than a composite construction?
yes, no?
High time these blank cutters paid some attention to waste..machining foam from a blank 3 1/2 inches or more thick for a board at 2 1/4 - 2 1/2
An example -Akubrd insta - machining a Varial blank...check the waste.
probably min $150 , very easy to glass with polyester , good compression strength , easy to shape except for the horrible fumes , but I still think a PU blank with an epoxy glass job is best !
just looking at my quiver, the 6'3" PU blank glassed with epoxy, not sure of the laminating schedule has held up amazingly well after 5 years.
thats trips to Tahiti, Gnaraloo, multiple winters at the Ox and Cloudbreak.
Nothing wrong with paying for a $2000 board if you have the money . I really like those craftsmen who make stronger equipment
Caml, what do you think of Tom Hoye's boards?
Varial foam have a new dry laminate glassing process -Patent pending.
Not sure about the 'dry' part of the process. The gist of it is vacuum bagged fibreglass with polyester or epoxy resin injected in under high pressure. Still sounds like it's still uncured resin, perhaps it dries quicker?
uv cured?
Not sure. Here's the spiel:
After working with some of the most widely known shapers and athletes around the globe for the past four years, Varial has utilized its advanced engineering capabilities to expand beyond Varial Foam, the company’s high-performance, proprietary surfboard blanks. Varial’s new, patent-pending process for glassing boards is known as Infused Glass. In this process, fiberglass is applied to a shaped surfboard blank without resin.
The dry-laminated surfboard is then vacuum bagged and injected with polyester or epoxy resin under high pressure. This technology, adapted from processes used to make giant wind turbine blades and racing boat hulls, yields a highly-repeatable, uniform laminate with extremely low resin content.
“Boards made with Infused Glass are stronger and lighter than boards made with traditional hand laminations, and allow for more precise control of a board’s flex characteristics,” said Varial CEO Edison Conner.
In this new process Varial also says they have the ability to isolate and engineer specific characteristics into the skins of the surfboard for any desired performance attribute.
“Our business was established on bringing materials from the aerospace industry into the surf world,” added Conner. “Using advanced technology to engineer a foam that was superior to all other surfboard foams in the marketplace was the first step – Infused Glass now allows us to focus on the other major component of surfboard construction in our quest to help shapers create the highest-performance and most highly-tuned surfboards.
That process of resin infusion via vac bagging has been used for a while now hasn't it?
Aren't there a few glassing houses in the states doing something like that?
Wonder how they get the fibreglass to dry laminate to the blank without sliding all over the place.
Anyhow, sounds great.
Well that's what I thought too. Gary McNeill, Josh Dowling, Firewire all do it, as would others.
Can't tell if this is something totally new or just Seppo sales speak.
Todd from Pirate Agenda surf vessels from down your way Stu been doing it for years also i think ?
Does the vac /cork layer under the Lam
anyone had any experience with it?