aright... so we're always hearing how bad popouts are.. is this board a popout etc.... I know popouts are made in china in a factory of non surfers and there's definitely a disadvantage over hand shaped boards... your not supporting a local shaper by buying a popout, the board was likely not inspected properly before leaving the factory etc.... but as far as the way the board rides, how bad could a popout really be? Is it just that they ding easier since they're not made by hand? I mean whoever designed the board (for most brands- Australia, canyon etc..) the one that created the design originally must have known what he was doing... I'm mostly referring to longboards lets hear some good points on this
I have 3 longboards, 2 hand shaped polys, and 1 epoxy popout. The handshapes are 1. Stewart Hydro Hull 9-0 2. Ricky Carrol 9-1. The popout is a 10-2 by Southpoint, I bought it about 10 years ago. I enjoy all of these boards quite a bit, but my favorite is the popout. The board is durable as they come, never had so much as a ding repair or heal dent, does not yellow in the sun, and has a really nice feel to it. As far as how it rides, I am not sure I can say I prefer the feel of the popout or the polys. Having more or less no preference as far as how the different boards ride, I am most likely inclined to go with a popout for my next longboard based on the quality and toughness a popout provides. Logs are expensive and easy to ding in transport, and in my opinion, logs should last a long long time, so the toughness factor wins out. For short boards, I go local custom poly boards every time. I have yet to try a pop out short board.
a few things: 1. all "popouts" are not created equally. firewires, nsps, & surftechs are all technically popouts. while i'm personally unimpressed w/ how these all ride, there are obvious differences in the purpose & quality of the aforementioned labels. 2. the canyons, surfboards australia, etc...that you see in shops now are NOT popouts...they are traditionally contructed poly boards manufactured overseas on the cheap by non-surfer labor. how this usually happens is that when the company closes or goes out of business, someone buys up the rights to the label & ships off to china to make the boards again. one of the worst offenses, IMO, since they are capitalizing on the former prestige of the label while manufacturing a cheap, ****ty product for their own profit. at least the brands that work w/ gsi put that label on their china-produced boards, so you are aware of what you're getting. these others don't. 3. back to popouts. when you scan a design & then make it in a mold, a la surftech, you lose much of the subtlety of the design...concaves mellow out or disappear altogether, rails become soft & lose their edge, the board itself as a whole does not flex the same, etc...all this translates to a board that doesn't work as well as the original, but has the added "benefit" of being harder to ding & not breaking as easily. as i said, i personally don't like the way these boards ride. surftechs get a "chatter" going in any kind of chop & don't provide the "pop" or flex through turns that i like from my polys, above & beyond the loss of performance due to the changes to the bottom & rail contours. there are, however, alternatives to all this...coil industries, for example, makes boards in a construction that is similar to firewire, but light years more advanced & arguably better. futureflex, hydroflex, & keahana, are all other examples of companies who developed a production technique & contracted out to many different shapers to produce more advanced, high performance, & more durable, surfboards domestically.
njsurfer42, I'm just curious as to why Coil boards are "light years more advanced & arguably better" than firewire. I have a firewire spitfire and love it but I am currently looking at adding a foil to the quiver as a more traditional shortboard when the surf is actually good. thanks, Dean
42... well said. I tend to think of popouts as boards that are molded, and otherwise go un"shaped". Different glassing technology can be used... hand lammed by cheap labor overseas, or given a composite skin and vac bagged. The down side to molded cores is that they tend to be very simple designs and lack the fine tuning hand shaping gives a board. A CNC milled core that is finish-shaped by a master shaper, however, is not a popout, and can be of very high quality and consistency. Which is great when you're cranking out thousands of the same board, after the design has been dialed in over many generations of prototypes. Glassing that is done by unskilled labor that does not surf can result in boards that, again, lack detail... where a little extra resin is ok and where it's not... how far an edge needs to be carried forward of the fins, and how sharp it has to be... that kind of stuff. Similarly, fin box/plug installations are often sloppy or done improperly, without the master glasser around to make sure things are up to standard. The good side is board prices go down, if that's the kind of thing that matters to you, and it does to a lot of people. Popouts that are molded, then given a composite skin, are very durable, last a long time, and so the money spent on one is a good investment. But... they ride very differently due to the nature of their construction, and as 42 said, they generally don't have the design refinements that hand shaped, hand glassed boards do. So how does your China-made board ride? That's up to you to decide.... it depends on what you're after. Any board can ride great if it's what you're looking for. Hope this helps...
Firewires are mass-produced in factories and have very little involvement from actual humans in their build process. Their skins resemble NSP construction as opposed to glass laminate. The foam they use is cheap as you would expect from a high-production operation. I had a Dominator with rapid-fire and liked it alright but it still just felt too stiff to me. Still a nice board after I sold it to a buddy a couple years back... right when I started getting into Coil boards. For Coil, they are based on the Space Coast and their boards are a product of that. Their area probably has more materials scientists per square mile than any other place in the nation, so they are in the perfect place to develop the tech they have. The matrices of glass they use are completely unique to them as far as I know--this includes the matrix on the rails and the glass on the rest of the board, plus they use very high quality foam. They are a small shop and do mostly custom orders, so naturally the boards they produce will be better suited to an individual rider and not a generalized one size fits all shape. Plus the foils they use are pretty unique and very effective. I have seen plenty of Firewires break or delaminate, seen one Coil delaminate but never seen one break.
i agree w/ you that logs should last a long time...but i'm also looking for a particular "feel" when riding my log, so a popout isn't going to work for me. i like my logs heavy, so 8 or 10oz cloth or volan is the call for me. w/ that kind of mass behind it, they glide for days.
I've heard nothing but GREAT things about Coil boards, I'm thinking about possibly contacting them around Oct. / Nov. time if I got the extra coin, i'm sure they'll consult with me on specs, but i'm just wondering what size I should be looking at. I'm 5'9" 170lbs, my smallest board I'm currently riding is a 6'10" WRV Fish, so I was thinking 6'4", but i'll let the shaper help me out on that i'm sure.
the epoxy construction of the popout is probably why it's so durable. have you noticed any stiffness to it compared to the polys? epoxy is stronger and stiffer than poly
I borrowed a heavily glassed poly like that a few years ago and liked it very much. Definitely would not be opposed. Regardless of preference, I think it is great to support your local craftsman, and great to have choices. Love the comments on this thread in either case!
You know man, my epoxy has great flex in my opinion, I can feel some serious spring when I make deep turns, but it feels right. I weigh 255, so maybe the stiffness in the board is good for my size. My poly boards when I ride them in heavier surf feel like they are going to break when I perform really deep turns, but maybe that is just because I am more accustomed to the stiffer board, or maybe because they are relatively thinly glassed compared to the board the commenter above mentioned. Short answer, yes the popout is stiffer than the polys I own.
A few years back I said I'd never buy a Tuflite. Then I bought a used Stretch F4 and that changed my mind completely. It's easily the best shortboard I've ever had for small to medium sized surf. The board floats better than a regular board which allows me to ride it smaller than my standard shortboard. Two of my friends rode it and decided to buy one brand new soon after. I tried going with a local shaper and I got decent boards from him, but they seem to just get beat up to fast do to glassing issues. Don't know what I'll get next. Maybe a local made longboard.
Some of you guys are comparing apples to oranges. ANY epoxy is going to wayyy more durable than any poly. It's not more durable because its a popout, its more durable because its epoxy. If you are talking about a board from overseas with standard poly construction compared to the american made one, then in general the american made glass job is going to be much much better and take longer to get heal dents, delam, etc. The difference in overseas shaped epoxy and american shaped epoxy isn't going to be as noticeable because they are going to be super tough either way.
the glassing has a lot to do w/ it, not the fact that the board is "epoxy". all epoxy is is the type of resin used to bond the fiberglass to the foam. sure, eps foam is a bit less dense, thus floating marginally better, & closed cell, thus resisting denting more, but if you glass an eps blank w/ 4oz glass, it's still going to take a beating. the great thing about eps is that you can glass it heavier but still have the finished product come out close to the same weight as a ploy that's glassed lighter. the glassing schedule is what makes it more durable. not the foam or resin used. i feel like the term "epoxy board" is being thrown around far too casually & w/out regard for it's actual meaning. ll tuflites are epoxy, but not all epoxies are tuflites.
I'm just referring to epoxy-built boards, I don't know that much about exactly why epoxy boards are way more durable, but they are. You can't compare the strength of a poly board to an epoxy. I suppose if you had an extremely heavily glassed poly it could have comparable strength.
But you cant just refer to "epoxy - built boards" when you're talking about durability. Tuflites use epoxy NSPs use epoxy Firewires use epoxy quality hand shaped and expertly glassed EPS boards use epoxy hand shaped but improperly sealed or poorly laminated or lightly glassed or poorly sanded EPS boards use epoxy some are durable, some are not, all are epoxy.
