building eco boards

Yes Lin is flax. Lin UD is just uni directional flax. The UD stuff soaks up resin and is furry if you don't bag it or poor man's bag it. The woven flax is easier to use and dosnt need bagging. Again it depends on the brand. Some are really tight and like glass to use and some are still a bit furry.

Bugger about the futures box. I'll use a chinook. Thx for the heads up.

^^^^
Interesting stuff.

I agree with the bio stuff but not this combination fabric stuff. Bourke you really know your stuff and I've heard you speak about carbon-innegra and CK before, but it seems that in real world experience it works. The boards with a carbon-innegra deck particulary with wood reinforcement just last. It seems its the impact strength advantage.

The problem is, we can't buy dyneema / spectra cloth anywhere and you're lucky you can. We can't get Textreme. All we have is innegra or recycled PET made for surfboards.
If you can tell me where to buy dyneema cloth in small qty I'd be ecstatic.


Then the other problem is when choosing a factory board from a large manufacturer (which is what 90% of sailors have to do) they don't offer Dyneema and similar..... you get glass and carbon with sometimes other materials. There is a massive difference in glass, the chinese stuff is a LOT weaker than direct sized (non heat treated) E glass made in Australia and USA specifically for surf use. What are we getting in our factory boards? Who knows, but I bet its the cheap ****. But we do know that proper 200gsm carbon-kevlar or carbon-innegra over wood is going to make a bloody tough deck. You can't get fake stuff and if you can see it over the whole board you know its there. No black-tinted resin trickery. So if I was buying a factory waveboard, I know what I'd be looking at.... the RRD / Tabou / Fanatic carbon-innegra construction that lasts. If we could still get it, the Starboard wood-carbon was awesome durability.
Starboard bio stuff now with flax and balsa -no way

Yep. I wish Starboard would bring back the Wood construction in the slalom/speed range. All my very well used Wood Isonics (some over 10 years old) are still perfectly sound, have held their shapes perfectly and are watertight. Even the 2008 model IS87, where the deck wood has faded quite a bit and the paint is worn off the bottom, is still going strong. The saving a 250 to 500grams of weight is neither here nor there as far as performance goes, even if it as much as a whole KG!! They are also the best damped, most comfortable EPS core boards I have ever ridden. Comfort = confidence = faster.

Show me a well used, high milage full carbon Isonic (circa 2013-4 on?) that is sound, watertight and still going strong without extensive patches and repairs, andI will show you my pet Unicorn.

i found a source for hemp cloth that's australian grown and made.

hempco.net.au/product/100-hemp-lightweight-fabric/

I've been dealing with John at Sanded for a few years . He's a nice guy and knows his products . Easy to talk to.
I asked about his fancy stuff and he said , for me , stick with the glass , We were talking of performance for dollar not eco. Even then glass is hard to beat. His glass is the good stuff . If I were to go carbon, cost goes through the roof for little overall weight saving .
Knock a kilo off.
Not to mention fragile.
A stronger longer lasting plain glass and resin board would have to be more eco friendly.

@tarquin1, I've got the pet cloth from sanded here with me.

on the glass v flax conversation i find it really interesting. i've found snippets of research comparing the 2. i read both being better than the other.

this is one snippet in favour of flax

The existing LCA studies revealed that natural fiber composites have superior environmental performance than composites with synthetic fiber or resin. However, cradle-to-gate LCA studies of flax, as an agrochemical-based material, and glass by Dissanayake et al. [321,322] reported that flax sliver is comparable in energy terms to glass fiber mat, and continuous glass fiber reinforcement appears to be superior from an environmental energy point of view to spun flax yarn.

The extract above refers to traditional farming methods with chemicals, tractors watering etc. not all flax or hemp is grown that way. some is organically produced. it also identifies the way the cloth is made has a big impact.

the other point i've mentioned a few times is locally produced products versus imported. imported raw materials just can't compete against locally acquired. if there is a local supply of fiberglass v an imported supply of flax then flax is far worse. interestingly i also had a conversation with John where i told him i was specifically coming from an eco position. for windsurfers he wasn't pushing flax to me. he did suggest the PET cloth and directed me to testing he had done when it's mixed with glass. he was well across the extra structural needs of a windsurfer as he supplied some manufacturers. glass v basalt he pointed out how either one can substitute the other. my own research puts basalt slightly in front of glass. but both are made from imported yarn in australia.

i'm also interested in working safe. what am i breathing and touching. that is a real issue for me. the more natural the better.

I like your research and thinking Gestalt.

As alluded to already, I think it important to remember that the integrety of a composite matrix will be very greatly influenced by the adhesion of the resin to the reinforcement. The traditional Glass's, Aramids and Carbons do very well in combination with epoxies. I have not seen any data yet about Basalt and Flax, but they seem to be at least in the ballpark. I am much more concerned with PET and especially Dyneems/Spectra as it's well known that not very much at all will adhere to UHMWPE = Polyethelene = same stuff as Tupperware, rotomoulded Plastic Windsurfers and Kayaks. Try repairing them with Epoxies! No chemical bond. Best you can do is get a mechanical bond, but even that is pretty iffy.

Obviously, Witchcraft has made it work, but I am sure it is not simple or easy.

Gestalt, are Colan glass fabrics made with locally produced glass yarn? I know their surfboard fabrics are among the very strongest, but not always used by surfboard builders who sometimes favour more supple impoted cloths at the expense of ultimate strength.

Flax is huge here in France. I am pretty sure they are the largest grower of flax or lin as they call it in the world.
Yes i have read for and against it. I like it because it doesn't seem to crack like glass. It has much better impact qualities. It does use more epoxy though.
As you said from all the people I spoke to and research I did use local is much more important.
I thought Colan used Australian made glass. Are they buying the fibers overseas and weaving cloth with it.