Surfboard Blanks

The raw material for most of the boards I shape is made from the polyeurothane foam (PU).

The first blanks were made at the end of the 1950’s by a couple of famous Californian surfboard shapers but the man credited with perfecting the common blank as we know it today was Gordon “Grubby” Clark.

This changed surfboards overnight from the bolsa wood cores that they were before to lighter more high performance boards also this was the start of true production surfboards.  Today Clark Foam is no more but there are many different companies in the market making  large quantities of blanks in Australia, South Africa, Europe and California.  There are many different qualities of blanks but the best quality seem to come from places that have a stable climate - the Gold Coast ,California and South Africa.  This is because the constant temperature of  around 80 degrees gives a consistency for the blowing process minimising the air bubbles ( I am not sure exactly why this occurs as I am not a chemist ) but blanks blown in colder climates never seem to keep the quality consistent. Also a lot of the better blank companies still pour their mix, to blow their blanks by hand and this is a very fine art which gives better results than blowing the blanks with a machine.

 

Blanks come in many variations from hand shaping blank moulds to machine plug moulds most companies have at least 10 - 20 moulds on offer at all times with others that can be ordered.  Many of the top shapers have at one time designed plugs for the larger companies giving the product closer tolerance ie the starting rocker curve and thickness and rail line.  The original blanks were just lumps of foam.  Blanks can also be ordered with a shaper’s specific rocker curves this is achieved when the glueing up process of the stringer is done.  I only use US Blanks in the UK this company seems to have taken over from where Clark left off, they probably have the most diverse catalogue on the market today.  The foam is hard but very easy to shape and the stringer glue ups are excellent.  In Spain as there is no outlet for US Blanks I use Extra Foam which is made by Rod Mcdonald, in South Africa the foam is different to the US Blanks ie the chemical mix used,  it is very hard still and is easy to shape but has a different texture to the US Blanks also the wood used for the stringers is different to the US Blanks.

For Epoxy Blanks (EPS) see  - E - Epoxy  coming soon