Waterproof?

I bagged a layer of 4 oz Zylon this evening.

The weave is so tight and the individual fibers must be non-porous. I had to work the epoxy into the fabric for the better part of 15 minutes. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that It's enough!

It seems to be holding! I'm not sure if I like this stuff, not much fun to work with. It's definately stiff and light, though!

too stiff to work , what schedule are you going to use , the 3 pound seems to have enough spring back i can do a test like COIL does , step on board and it springs back ,

Looks interesting for sure Jeff! In a good way though. I'll be waiting to hear about how it rides. It always neat to see you do your write-ups on different materials and give your opinions and share your knowledge with the rest of us. I think its pretty cool lookin!

Thanks guys. Also thank YOU TXSurf for the clarification on the "interesting" Too funny.

Hey Mark, I don't think that fabric alone can make a board too stiff. I think that it was Sean Ward, during that skimmer build, who suggested thinning the tail. I got to thinking about that comment Greg Loher made about the domed deck not being useful construction. We see this in skimmers like P5's that just use 3 x 6 oz top and bottom. The distance between the skins, be they HD foam, or just fabric, has more of an impact than the material itself.

I believe we would benefit by rethinking the design to incorporate the benefits of the construction and materials.

I thinned the tail on this, as well as, through out the length.

Out of the bag this morning and it weighs in at 2 pounds and 10 oz. That is about 7 oz heavier than the "surftech" board at this stage. Mostly that is associated with the Carbon on the rails, plus I used a 2 oz e-glass on the bottom of the first board, whereas this board uses a 4 oz fabric.

The stiffness increase is pretty substantial on this board, compared to the first effort. It's a factor of about 4 from the first effort. My testing methodology is very rudimentary so that factor is probaby not overly accurate. I just checked the "strength chart" from Soeller Composites and that does show a potential 4 to 1 increase compared to s-glass.

Regardless of the chart, I think I can safely say that an increase in weight of 7 oz, which represented almost a 20% increase, allowed me to decrease thickness of the web by approximately 12% and still resulted in an increase in stiffness in excess of 100%.