Heavy Glass, Man

From what I understand, multiple layers of glass make a stronger lamination than a single layer of thicker fiber glass.  So you might want to do 2 layers of 6 oz glass over 1 layer 12oz...

When you say 12 on the bottom and 18 top, do you really mean double 6 and triple 6?

I've never heard of E glass in 12 and 18 oz weights.

Good for you. Especially on a longboard. Once opon a time, I had a whole fleet of rental boards, glassed top and bottom with double 10 oz. And you know, a lot of 'em are still around today, well nigh 40 years later.

 Or when you drop it taking it out of the car, or in the doorframe coming out of the house, etc. Again, too few people think about that. My own boards are glassed lighter...and they're kneeboards.... but I'm near-religious about keeping them in padded board bags when they are not actually in the water. And even then, I go with the heaviest glass the maker offers.

Again, good for you. Thinking ahead isn't something a lot of people do. I was a ding repair guy for a long time, and most of the dings I saw were what I called 'garage dings', what happened when somebody was a little careless. Or the consequences of having a few of those and neglecting them.

 Haaaaa - well, like I said, I'm a board bag fanatic. But I suspect I am the exception rather than the rule. The people who think they are good at babying their stuff ...usually ain't.

 Yeah, well..... he's going with what are 'industry standards' these days. Which means boards that get stomped to death in short order, delammed before their time and busted often if it gets any size to it.

 Okay, I'm the antichrist here, maybe, but I would go with hotcoat/sanding coat and gloss. How come? Well, you might have less chance of getting a pinhole in the one coat, which in turn leads to a wee bit of water leakage, brown foam freckles and what have you. A few ounces, but it adds a little peace of mind at the very least.

 Like you say, anything beyond 4 oz bottom, 6+4 deck seems to be called heavy. And...that's dumb. Or it's diabolically smart.

 Heh- carve it out of a solid wood beam?

Seriously, though, 'durable' is something the mainstream biz has abandoned. Light foam, light glassed boards are what they push, on account of how if a board lasts a long time it's going to be a long time before they sell another one. Dunno if that's an oversight or the 'diabolically smart' thing I mentioned above.

This is why the various molded boards from Asia are selling well, they hold up compared to what else is on the market.

The industry, again, is pushing 'lightweight boards, just like the pros use'...and while a pro can happily use up a board a week, you and I can't. We don't get our boards free. What little performance advantage there may be- and I'd question that, especially in a longboard , well, maybe a few pros can use it, but 99% of us will never notice it except when carrying it or replacing it. And...you gotta stomp a longboard to turn it, light or heavy. It's a freakin' longboard, after all. If you have light glass, you will stomp it to death in short order. heavy glass, well, you'll have it a while.

Are there ways to make a board stronger that don't only use heavier glass? Sure there are, including layers of heavier foam over top of your basic blank, which are sandwiched between a couple layers of glass, vaccum bagged and what have you. There are some weight advantages, yes. Not major weight advantages unless you have the underlying foam extra-extra light, though. Which in turn has it's own set of tradeoffs.

But, hey, you're using a simple shaped foam blank with plain old glass over it. Nothing wrong with that at all. You can do things like certain rail contours that you can't do easily otherwise. You don't need to vaccum bag it, a whole list of other things you don't have to do and a whole list of things that can go wrong that you don't have to worry about. Stick with what you're doing. 

And, we are talking about a longboard here. What's the extra weight, 5-10 lbs? If you had a large lunch before you went surfing, that'd be nearly the same. How about wetsuit weight. Or, in my case, that spare tire I seem to have these days. Getting rid of that would make far more difference than a lousy few pounds of board.

Keep up the good work, man.

I, for one, would far rather see something like this question than the ones I see of 'I made my ultralight longboard, now why is it delaminating?' or 'Why do I have these stress cracks?' or 'why did my board break?'. Those are questions with a simple answer.....

...and you've found it.

doc...

hey i just got done with a retro fish on 1.7 EPS blank i glassed it real heavy ( think to much ) 3x 6 on deck and 1x 4 + 1x6 on bottom and heavy hot coats. board feels soild as but has got a bit heavy than would like, but i surf on a rocky point break and had the same thoughs as you, slippery rocks make good battle scares!!

cheers antony

Exactly, and it's not all that surprising how many are still around, even with a lot of neglect over the years.

The first real light-glassed board I ever saw was a Weber Ski with single 10 oz top and bottom, The deck wasn't hotcoated, though it may have had a deck patch. It was Nat Young's factory special, which wound up here after a factory team tour of the East Coast.

And it broke, not all that long after, which surprised nobody.

I find myself asking, why is it that a surfboard costs pretty much the same two weeks pay for a kid pumping gas as it did back then...if not more...., how come it doesn't last nearly as long?  I'm not a big fan of retro-everything, but maybe this is a step back that's worthwhile.

doc...

I like that glass schedule myself.

I'm doing 2x6oz, top and bottom, w/6ox patches, set at 45/45: nose and tail on bottom and top w/a 3rd patch in the middle of the deck.

I have a heavier one, a layer of 4oz, but the patches are 4oz, @ 9'3", and the board rides as loose as I want once it's over shoulder high w/some steepness... 

I can remember glassing boards with double ten ounce on both sides. This included the laps. To wet out the laps we would flip the glass up and wet it out with the squeegee. It worked great..and saved resin. It still works great. Kind of a lost technique????? I think I showed it on the Master Glasser Video.

     Howzit my friend Mr. Clean, It's only a lost art for the younger glassers or should I say no art. I remember doing them but it was in the days of taped off glassing that it worked best. I wouldn't do it with free laps but when we were doing 10oz x2 it was almost the only way to make sure the rails were wet out enough.I am so anal about cutting the glass for my free laps that I have had people think they were cut laps. Mark Angell was hasseling me today about setting up shop, but I told him that the cancer thing has made me very leery about glassing on a production scale ever again. Aloha,Kokua

yea  it seemed to be late seventys  silane glass freelaps & the other dodgy bits came into vogue

from there the standard  diminished

Well, it does use chromium, but it's still legal and in use. It 'attaches tenaciously' to stuff like glass fibers, metals and what have you. The technical name of Volan is METHACRYLATO CHROMIC CHLORIDE in an alcohol-water-acetone solution, as it's shipped to the textile makers. The chromium ( in the +3 oxidation state: Chromium (III) rather than the very toxic Chromium (IV))  in the finished cloth is something on the order of 0.01% by weight of the finished cloth.

It's definitely not good for you, but bonded to the cloth as it is when the likes of use get ahold of it, it's not a problem by itself.

http://www.zaclon.com/pdf/volan_datasheet.pdf and http://www2.hazard.com/msds/f2/bcd/bcdjm.html

The unpleasant things about cloth treated with Volan are more related to the cloth itself: http://www.wescoweld.com/MSDS/Clark_Schwebel%20Inc/Fiber%20Glass%20Fabric_Volan%20Finish.pdf gives more details. Normal precautions taken while sanding will keep both the Volan treatment and the far nastier fibers and resin dust at bay.

hope that's of use

doc...

not a single pressure ding though. the deck is in original condition and given its life experience, amazing

I glass my longboards heavy as well. I usually do mine with with 2 layers of 10oz on both sides and a 10oz deck patch. I love the GLIDE of a heavy board as well as the durability. I pull back the wide point  and the rocker apex on alot of my longboards which makes it hard to feel any extra weight when turning. I glass my mid sized boards heavy as well. Normally 2 layers of 6 oz on both sides. Once again its all about glide to me and durability. High performance sometimes eqautes to the power of the surfer in my opinion. Everyone tells me my boards are glassed too heavy until they ride them..

Hey Doc..

I bought a 100yd. x50" roll  of   6oz. Volan   S glassquite some time ago,, it's been 4-5 years,, I think........

I've used plenty of 6oz. S-glass in the past,,, but it was always bright white in color,,  which I like... The  Volan roll I bought  had a super subtle "bottle green" color,, which I hated at the time of purchase,,,,,, so I never used the glass...

Now that I've enjoyed seeing all the cool tinted surfboards  I've seen here at Sway's,,,,, I  'm kind of drawn to that "greenish" glow to the glass...

Is there truely a   Volan S,   ???      Or was I duped   ??

 Should I hang onto this relic???    I've never cut 1 inch off of  this roll,,, because I ordered it" sight unseen" and hated the "green" color when I unwrapped it... 

You could add a  very- very small amount of green tint to this cloth and end up with a very sexy  '"volan tint"........I've never used this "old school " cloth......  Any history,,, or   "pros and cons"   would be a lot of fun to read about.........

Back  to the topic here,   Sorry for distraction  paul....

The standard glass job  for   a  5/8"  thick   A 600 core-cell kite twin-tip  is :  18 oz- 21oz.. top   x   18 oz.  bottom or similar combinations of  3 x 6oz. glass... The fact that you've equalled this on a long board is,,,,,, wild man,,,, wild!!!

I used to do   4x 4oz. S glass decks and 3 x 4oz, S  bottoms on  some 5/8" thick core- cell kite boards I built 5 years ago... I still ride 3 of them today, and they might possibly last longer than me..lol  You've got a lotta' glass on those long boards dude.......

The best way to end up with a super durable  / light weight   SUP or longboard,,,   is to build it with a quality sandwich construction using a very light weight eps core and a combination of high strength to weight skins that have inherently good flex qualities...imho...

Something like :    1.0#  eps core  ,,,   3mm. core-cell skins,,,,    and a systematically layered laminate of  2oz. innegra,,, 2.4 and 3,6 oz.  S glasses,, in combinations to suit the desired strength to weight requirements........

Unfortunately,  the  cheap / durable "off -shore" built composite SUP's / long boards  are swamping our shores ... We can build even better, light weight "tankers" than these companies,, we just have to use our imaginations   and spend some cash,,,lol

Hey, Kiterider;

I've heard of Volan treatment on 6 oz , it's just not all that common, you usually find it on 10 oz and up and in fact I've found it's hard to avoid on heavy cloth. F'rinstance: http://thayercraft.com/Style%206580.htm .

I wouldn't add tint, though, the greenish 'volan color' becomes more apparent when it's laminated, especially with multiple layers. I'd definitely want to use cut laps, as otherwise it looks a little sloppy when the volan doesn't come to a clean edge. ;Being a little lazy, I'm not gonna look up any pictures, I'm sure you've seen quite a few Volan boards and I think you'll notice cut laps on all of 'em.

hope that's of use

doc...

Hey, Kiterider,

Uhmmm, I hadn't thought about just what the volan did- it's kinda interesting stuff, volan

During application, the

active molecules attach to inorganic or polar substrate

surfaces and orient themselves with polymerizable

groups outward, to permit combination with a wide

variety of thermosetting resins:

What it does is act, in a way, like a soap does. On one end of a soap molecule is a hydrocarbon and on the other end is a polar hydroxide component, so one end gloms onto the oil or whatever crud you're trying to wash off and the other end will hang with water.

Now, similarly, the volan molecule:

Volan Molecule

This is kind of an interesting molecule here: you've got a quasi-aromatic ring component, four very polar Cl- and H+ (that'd bond to structures like SiO glass or metals) and then there's the C=CH2, which could well be taken to a C-CH2-C(x)H(2x) kind of thing in the presence of something polymeric that was in the process of hardening, like a resin, making the resin bond to the glass more than a simple mechanical bond. The sorta aromatic O=C-O could also be broken into by an epoxy polymerising which in turn would make a really good bond with that.

Huh! That's cool!

Hadn't really thought about how it'd work, but yeah, you're absolutely right, that's just what it does. Prolly better than silane too.

Now, I'm wondering just how it is that the volan treated cloth is 'more green' when you put the resin to it, is it that the glass fibers kinda drop out of the equation as it were, or is it something else. But just now, I am way, way too lazy to look it up and the chemist I'd ask up and died on me a couple of years ago.

Thanks, man, that was an interesting question...

doc...

just a quick glance at fiberglasssupply.com's online catalog shows that volan comes in a wide variety of weights.

In "plain weave"...

Style # 1522- 3.7 oz

      # 7533  5.6 oz

     # 7500 9.7 oz

Flat weave

Style # 3733 5.6 oz

    #  1800  9.7 oz

I have an 8' noserider with the "Choice" label that was glassed with 8 oz volan about 8 years ago. Most likely 7.6 in reality.

Hasn't this come up before? Many misinformed people think volan = heavy. Not true, at all. Like many glass fabrics, it comes in a variety of weights. Volan and silane are what's known as binders. During the manufacturing process fiberglass is coated with a lubricant to allow it to course through the machinery such as looms. At that stage it's known as 'grey goods'. Once it is woven into cloth it is run through a wash to remove the lubricant. After that, it is finished with a binder of some type. Different binders are used for different applications. As doc's little chemistry tutorial shows, volan is a binding agent used to form a better chemical bond than that achieved through solely mechanical means.

And, I always order my long(er) boards with a volan glass job tinted blue. It just looks nice to me. Plus, acts as a deterrent to 'sun-tanning'.