Anyone ever break a board on their first session out with a new board?Whats the earliest you've broke a board after you had bought one?
Dude, last summer. I bought a brand new WRV in ocmd..... Literally walked across the street, 2 min. after the buy, and snapped it in 2 ON THE FIRST WAVE!!!!!! pulled into a barrel, got clipped, and when i came up i was just like... **** MOTHER****ER!!!!
Wow that sucks,A couple years ago I had just bought a wrv and right before I walked off the boardwalk I wanted to rinse me feet and board off and stuck it under the shower.It slipped out of my hand and pretty much ripped my right fin out.Man, I felt sick to my stomach.What a terrible feeling.
About 8 years ago, right after I moved to california... The girlfriend and I were making ends meet and didnt have a whole lot of money. My girlfriend saved up and bought me a $500 custom 6'0 round tail plus one... Sickest board ever... So, I lived right on sunset cliffs at this point, so I was surfing the boat ramp (which is a break over reef that has about 20-25 foot cliffs on all sides. There is about a 15 yard wide area that you can enter and exit from... Pain in the as$ break.... Anyway, I take the board out, for the first time. New leash, new everything.... The first wave I took was a chunky one on a higher tide, so you are taking off pretty close to the inside and cliffs. I pull into a closeout barrel on my first wave, I feel the leash just rip right off my leg. That empty leg feeling. I was about 100 yards out... And as I swam in, all I could do is stare at my brand new baord as it smashed against the cliffs... Over... And Over. And Over. And over... The leash RING had broken.... Worst day EVER!!!! I was soooo pissed and sad. My girl saved up for the sickest thing ever and I come back with the entire front end smashed off... Tail between my legs... A few years later, my shaper made me a custmo board to try out down at La Fonda... Second set wave of the day, I caught it, pulled into the north peak heading towards the rocks and camp, and when the wave closed out the lip caught the front end, it buckled the board right in the center. Like a pencil snapping. I had backup boards... I didn;t care tat day cause I didnt pay for the board. My shaper said we probably didn't let it cure enough. It was only finished like 5 days before that.
After a year for me. Paddled out into some big hurricane swell and chickened out as a set wave heaved up in front of me. Ditched the board and dove for the bottom only to come up and see the back half dangling from my leash. I swam in found the top walked back to my truck grabbed another board paddled out (thru some intense surf) took off on a wave, ate it, leash broke, swam in walked back to my car got another leash.... you get the point .
it was probably 4 months after i bought my 6'1" al merrick flyer tuflite i snapped the nose off on some shorebreak and i cried like the whole day. but dont you hate the feeling you get of breaking a surfboard? i know i do.
i've broken exactly 1 board in over 20 years of surfing. that was at a slabbing left reef in panama that almost took my scalp as well...but i get my boards glassed w/ actual fibreglass & resin, not tissue paper & glue. 6oz all around & a 4oz deck patch. my boards last forever...
See, my shaper has a thing for thins glass etc to keep light and quick. He swears by them... I mean, they are easier to do airs with, but they get pressuer dings all over them... So my question to you is, how much speed and wieght do you sacrifice on a glass job like that? Cause, It's like, my big wave boards all have thick glass and yeah they can take a beating, but I only ride them a few weeks all year. I want to know how every day riding shortboards perform with thicker glass/resin...
IMO theres no need for your everyday (HH and under) shortboard to be glassed with 6 oz cloth and deck patches. (Slabbing reefs are another thing) You shouldnt be breaking boards in chest high waves unless your doing airs and suicidal floaters and i would think if your surfing is at that level you'd want lighter boards. I like glassing boards lightly but with a 4 oz deck patch from about the middle of where your traction pad would go to about where your front foot is..only adds a few ounces of weight but really reducing caved in decks
i kind of agree w/ what mitchell said...but on the other hand, i'm not looking to be the next kelly slater or mick fanning. i don't need super light boards. i don't notice a difference in weight & certainly not in speed...actually, i think the weight tends to help in carving turns....objects in motion & all that. i think one of the reasons i tend to get my boards glassed as i do is that its a hold-over from my "i'm broke" days & couldn't afford to be replacing & repairing my boards all the time. a fairly well-known local pro who rides for um & ergo came into the shop one day w/ a board that had a nose that looked like someone had driven over it...he'd just buckled the $#!t out of this basically brand-new board ON A CUTBACK! turns out, that he gets his boards glassed LIGHTER than the standard pro glassing b/c he thinks he needs it. 4oz is too heavy for him (he's not a small guy, either). i share this anecdote to illustrate that, to an extent, the glassing/weight thing is all in our minds. if you think its too heavy, it will be. brian wynn's stock glass job for shortboards is 6oz all around. i think that's pretty solid for the average joe. my biggest gripe w/ the major board manufacturers is that they sacrifice durability for weight, & the majority of surfers won't even notice. if i were you, i'd insist on at least a 6oz glass job on my next board. if your shaper won't do it, find a new shaper. deck denting happens on every poly board. its a given. but there's no reason you should put a dent in the thing just by gripping the rails to duckdive.
Even though I am no great surfer, I swear I can tell the difference in the ride depending on glass weight especially on very short boards. I shaped and glassed a board this fall and went all out on the glassing, 6oz bottom 6oz top with a 4 once patch. This was a small board 5'5" with gloss coat, and it is a dead log at best. Heavy with no flex at all and I hate it. The next board I shaped I did a 6"0" 4 oz bottom 4 oz top with a 4 oz patch with no gloss coat ant it is light and responsive. I think with some boards, the longer they are, they can take more glass weight and still feel alive based on the twang the length gives them. The shorter you go in length the glassing has to reflect that or the board will be dead in the water like mine. I have also found that depending on the type of damage you do to boards that should be factored in when deciding to go epoxy or Poly. The epoxy is almost rubbery in that it doesn't shatter or break in 2 as easily. So if the wear you put on a board is blunt force impacts epoxy resin is best. Poly is harder and resists denting if the force that makes the dent is slow and even. Slow and even pressure is what I put on a board, I tend to drag my right leg while getting to my feet and I depress the back right side of every board I have. Every epoxy resined board I have is crushed back there, the poly boards not so much.
That's another thing I like about being a bodyboarder... the boards don't break as easy, and neither do we.
Third session on a HP longboard in overhead surf. Stupid. The board was built for waist high surf, and super thin for an LB. Other than that, a few months on a chip. In the past 5 or 6 years I've switched over to 2 lb EPS with 2x6 deck and 1x6 bottom, and my boards are solid, light, and haven't had one start to delam yet. Dents, but no delams.
Yeah, I really don't get too much damage out of the slab reef situation. Excpet for completely snapping one... But anyway, most of the damage on my boards are all the same kind of thing. I usually ride plus one team rider boards, so they are glasses/shaped for competition surfing. Usually southern california beach breaks... basic, traditional shorties.... The damage always builds up around the top and bottom along my stringer. Most of the force I put on my boards are usually from overshooting an air and trying to land in the flats and stupid stuff. I will try and stomp something out that I may have taken a bad angle on, and after the session, I have smashed down so hard on the deck with my landings that it pushed the resin down on both sides of the stringer, thus opening up and letting water in. I had to completely stop getting boards with FCS fin boxes, because even with the traction pad over the fin boxes, I stomp through both FCS boxes on each side. On EVERY board I have done this. Like clockwork.... So this is why I asked, because although I am 29 and getting older, I am still in a pretty air/speed oriented surfing. So, until my knees start giving out in abotu 5years, I will continue destroying boards trying to go big etc... But Its like, It is always the same damge on my boards. Stringer damage from me stomping through landings.... So with all that being said, I guess I just need to stick to the glass jobs I have now. Its relatively thin, but I get the performance I need. Like I said, the only luck I have had with thicker glass jobs are on my larger wave boards that get ridden like 10 times a year... P.S. I did the EPS epoxy thing with my shaper on and off for about a year. EPS is OUTSTANDING for getting speed and launching air on clean beach break days... But after all kinds of testing, I never road an EPS epoxy that performed properly on Point/Reef surf. I would be going nuts at my beach break on a 6'0 epoxy all week, then the surf would get a few feet over head and I would take it down to a big chunky reef break, and no sh**, almost everytime, the boards would just lose all of their torque through top turns and huge carves..... I mean, you get half way through a big roundhouse and you feel your rails give out and the whole board just dies in the water.... And if it doesn't completely die, you are left following through a turn then pumping 10 times to get back into the pocket... So, I have tried EPS, and yes, I beat the HELL out of those boards and never damaged one, so that was awesome, but if I wasn't out trying to do big airs that day or something, the EPS was useless to me... not to mention the 2-3 week of riding it everyday just to get it dialed in.... So, heavy glass doesn't work for me and EPS doesn't work for me.... booo,.
Zippy..I think the shape of the rail makes a difference in flex and i dont like stiff feeling shortboards either. Short boards with thick boxy rails seem to have less flex. the way i imagine it, youve got three layers of 6 oz cloth all oriented in that direction on a flat apexed rail is basically adding two more stringers. Pinched rails seem to flex more. I like the single (4 oz) bottom, single (6 oz) deck glassing, with a 4 oz deck patch...only two layers of cloth around all the rails and all up in the nose where you dont need it, and the part of the deck you stand/crank turns on, has 6/4 so real solid.
Yeah I see what your saying although the rails on that board are not boxy and are more pinched than you would believe, I mean so pinched they are knife like. This is one of my experimental boards that I had such high hopes for in summer mush . Who knows, if I can control myself and not tear off the glass and reshape, it might be great this coming summer. The way I'm going I'm gonna have to host my own AB3 to get some more input on the ride of these things. As I've told you many times I don't switch between boards all very well, so when I shape one and hate it I just toss it aside without giving it a chance. MAybe someone with more skill at trying new shapes could give me good feedback.
You can try to tweak your boards' flex by trying different resin formulas, foils, and stringer designs. I know exactly what you mean about the feel of EPS/epoxy boards compared to PU/PE. Real hardcore epoxy guys will tell you, "they're supposed to feel different," and I get that. But if you're after a particular feel, that ain't gonna help ya. Try some resins and resin combinations (different lams with different resins, not mixing resins) that are specifically formulated for more flex. Try parabolic stringers (really starting to dig these), thinner stringers, high density foam stringers, or go stringerless. Try veneers (different woods have different flex and compressional characteristics) instead of stringers, with light cores and light glass jobs. Flex is highly individual, as you well know. But strength is universal.
Never snapped/broken a board in my life! =O But that's probably because I haven't pushed myself enough in the bigger surf, I tend to become more reticent and cautious. I guess it just comes with time and practice... But for now, I'm happy I haven't broken any of my boards because then I don't have to pay to get a new one!! especially since I don't have a consistent source of income as of now.
I've never broken any boards either. I've surfed some sketchy conditions, but I guess I've lucked out. (big knock on wood)
summer day, warm, chill little waist-stomach high and clean swell coming through. late afternoon, early evening. brand new 5'10" lost xtr with a parabolic stringer. super stoked on this little swell out of nowhere in the mid-summer. me and a 'bro' are having a blast, not many people out for once. take off at a nice little peak and start pumping right, mid-pump a loud "POP" comes from my board as i am thrown from it. I come up and she's split in two, cleanly, about a third of the way up from the bottom. No contact, no dings, no nothing but pumping down the line and there she is, broken in two. Needless to say, i was bummed/out of a lotttt of cash. Tried to get ahold of the 'lost' guys to no avail. Will never buy a firewire/xtr again. The engineering/shaping on the board was obviously faulty. There was not a scuff on that board prior to snappage. I will now take this oppurtunity to plug Malibu's: they fckin rock. They took pity on my pour soul and leigh hit me with a sweet deal on my next board. Good people.
