Back To Black With Amos From Lucid Glassing

For over three decades, the surfboard industry has been flirting with carbon fibre.

Carbon first appeared as lone strips in the early-90s, used to reinforce the fibreglass, it's since been used in foot and tail patches, and even full wraps from the short-lived Aviso Surfboards. The only shaper to use carbon long-term is Hayden Cox whose FibreFlex tech employs carbon to strengthen the rails along a stringerless blank.

In recent years, carbon has again appeared as a full wrap laminate, most commonly seen in small wave performance boards sporting the Dark Arts logo.

Here in Australia, Amos Barriskill from Lucid Glassing at Ballina, NSW, is specialising in carbon and the recent interest in carbon has seen his order book swell. Some of the shapers who've worked with Amos include Phil Myers, Wayne Webster, Maurice Cole, Dylan Perese, Greg Webber, Mitchell Rae, and there are many, many more.

Swellnet called Amos to find out what's happening with the resurgence in black boards.

Amos Barriskill: How long has Lucid Glassing been around?
Swellnet: I've been glassing boards for fifteen years, but I only put a name to it three or four years ago. It started when I was building my own surfboards in PU, then I began glassing a few of the local guys' boards here and there. Just a small number of boards.

The turning point was when I got into hydrofoiling - that got me interested in using different materials for different strengths and weights, and that's where I discovered carbon. It's really only been the last twelve months that I've gone full circle and returned to surfboards. That's where my focus is and it seems to be getting received quite well.

For those unaware, can you explain the properties of carbon fibre when used in surfboards?
To take it back to basics, the main characteristic of carbon is that you can build a stronger, lighter board that's going to last longer - and that's especially important for a 100-kilo plus guy like myself. We can build something that really feels like a performance board that's going to last a much longer period of time.

When it's coupled with EPS, it just keeps its pop and its flex. All those nice things we enjoy.

Phil Myers admires his reflection in the polish of a ten channel carbon wrap.

How does carbon compare for durability, especially around rocky breaks?
The way we build them, the carbon is on the outside of the board like an outside shell. We do a structural layer of fibreglass underneath the carbon - sometimes it's a six-ounce, sometimes it's a four depending on the schedule.

The carbon's got to be hit much harder to have an effect. Obviously, any board that rolls over the rocks is going to get damaged, but it's way more resistant in general, particularly compared to boards made of regular polyester and PU.

People say full carbon boards don't have much flex. How do you address that?
Carbon will be much stiffer given that it's a much stronger fibre, but it's about finding the right combination of materials. For our performance carbon boards, we use stringerless EPS blanks. That combination brings back some pretty good flex properties.

Also, I hear from guys that have been on carbon boards for twelve months, eighteen months, or even longer, and they're still getting that real fresh springiness and pop out of their boards.

I've heard it said that carbon has a longer 'memory'. Is that why people like Mick Mackie and Mitchell Rae use it in their flex tails?
Yeah, possibly. I imagine the flex properties you mention - the long-lasting flex - would be the combination of epoxy resin and the carbon.

As you know, a PU/PE board can feel dull after six months or twelve months, whereas it seems when epoxy is combined with the carbon, that flex just lives on.

Recently, Nev Hyman visited the factory to show Amos a carbon board made in the nineties. Nev has since made a run of modern shortboards glassed by Amos.

What's your most common build for the average surfer?
For an average surfer who wants a performance board that feels really light and poppy, I'd suggest stringerless EPS with what we call a standard layout—six-ounce carbon bottom with four-ounce fibreglass and six-ounce carbon deck. That board is going to be potentially lighter than your super lightweight four-and-four PU and have a much longer-lasting, stronger glass job due to the process and materials we're using.

Also, we've done a few bigger guns. We did a gun for Webby [Wayne Webster] who has a customer who typically rides 8'6" to 9'0"s in PU with double-six glass jobs. We built him EPS and carbon wrap with a very similar regime: double-six top and bottom, but carbon, and he said that board paddled into waves much better due to the EPS.

It's good feedback: It's not very often that you pull a board out that big so it has to work.

Of the builds that I've seen, most have been shortboards. Is working with big wave guns new territory for you?
Yeah. It's something we're experimenting on. I'm using a PVC or a high-density foam stringer up to forty mills, so up to four centimetres thick, just to give the boards a bit of spine...

Hang on, did you say four centimetres..?
Yeah, yeah. A four centimetre PVC stringer, so it's like an 80-pound density foam, which we glue up. That gives the boards a little extra weight, a little extra spine, but it doesn't stiffen the board up so much that it affects the spring of the board, if that makes sense, because obviously, the carbon is giving the board the stiffness that it needs, but we can still put that spine in there.

"It's about finding the correct blend of materials" - In this instance an EPS blank with a four centimetre PVC stringer, all wrapped in carbon.

You're working with epoxy resin and a black laminate: I guess there's less worry about the yellowing effect of aging epoxy?
I think that was a big industry mistake from the early 2000s. A lot of epoxy boards were getting built with incorrect resins, and that's where you saw yellowing and production problems. It really didn't do the EPS epoxy process any justice.

Epoxy resins have improved a lot in the last ten to fifteen years.

You think epoxy resins don't discolour the way they used to..?
I remember seeing epoxy boards that were just horribly yellow, and I feel like that's almost a thing of the past due to improvement in resins. These days, PU or epoxy resins will have some form of an optimiser in it, and whether that optimiser is UV stable or not will depend on how the board's going to look in twelve months time.

With our carbon boards, we actually use what's called a clear resin with no optimiser at all, because we're obviously not chasing that really bright finish—we want to achieve a clear finish.

OK, fair enough. Let's talk about other practicalities: Do black boards get too hot in the sun?
You could understand I have this conversation every single day...

Let's go over it once and for all.
If you're buying a black board, you have to treat it like it's a black board. There's an option to put coloured resin tint over it, or airbrush it, spray it. But if you're forking out for a carbon board, you want to see the carbon, right?

So it's just a matter of education - get in the habit of using your board bag when it's in the car, put it in the shade on the beach, don't leave it on the sand in the sun, and on long walks around the point keep the wax away from the sun.

Tell us about your relationship with Dark Arts.
Dark Arts from California really brought carbon vacuum bag construction to the surf industry with the biggest impact. They had some pretty big brands and high-profile surfers riding those boards. It was Dan Thomson [Tomo] who basically joined the dots—he'd signed up with Dark Arts on a few of his models and saw what we were doing here in Australia was very similar.

We've just taken the license to build Dark Arts boards in Australia. Our business ethos is very similar—we don't want to mass produce, we want to build quality over quantity.

How does the vacuum bagging process work?
We're building the board almost exactly the same as you would typically, except once the board's been laminated, we're curing it under vacuum. As that resin and cloth is curing, everything's getting squeezed together as tight as we want it to go. There's actually a layer in the bagging process called breather cloth that's designed to absorb resin. You're putting on the same amount of resin to correctly wet out all the cloth, but as that board cures under vacuum, it's absorbing the excess that you wouldn't be able to get out by hand.

How many carbon surfboards are you producing?
Overall carbon boards, we're doing around 20 to 25 a week, but for surfboards it's more like 5 to 10 at this stage. Those numbers are definitely increasing as it's growing.

Though he typically shapes guns of varying lengths, lately Mitchell Rae is having fun working on the model he calls the Phaza. It began as a design collaboration with Harry Bryant, who rode a 5'6" version at last year's Pipe Masters, and has Mitchell's V2 stringer - see image at far left for a visual explanation - while the latest run is also wrapped in carbon.

What collaborations do you have coming up?
We're just about to release a collaboration with Mitchell Rae. As a slightly younger board builder, getting the tick of approval from Mitchell is a nice feather to have in your hat. We're doing a run of his Phaza model, which Harry Bryant's been riding, all between 5'6" and 6'0".

We've decided to combine the carbon vacuum bag with Mitchell's V2 stringers. They're in production at the moment and we'll be dropping those in the next week or two.

We've also got collaborations coming up with Peter McCabe, and we've even got George Greenough involved - building some of his flex Spoons. We'll have more to say on that soon.

It's all about working with dedicated, lifelong shapers and building cool boards with them.

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