New reinforcement fabrics

[Timmy!]

Pretty cool stuff! What's the cost on that red stuff?

[Surfdad]

That's a hybrid of carbon fiber and kevlar. It's 3K tow CF and 1500 denier kevlar. 50" wide and 5.5 oz weight. I paid $34 a yard for it.

[Timmy!]

That's not too expensive I guess. Can you bake it and make it even stronger or does that require a special resin to do that?

[Surfdad]

Carbon really needs to be laminated with epoxy. You'll often see carbon under a shiny polyester resin, but carbon is actually stronger than polyester, so that matrix is just crap. The resin will crack and break before the reinforcement. BUT it sells boards because most consumers don't know the difference.

Epoxy, on the other hand, is stronger than the carbon and so the combination of the two in a matrix is super strong. You hear the marketing that says it's stronger than steel, which is accurate, if you compare a piece of steel 0.06" inches thick

Anyway back to the question, Epoxy requires a post cure (cooking it like you suggest) to fully cure and gain all of it's mechanical properties. Also, epoxy tends to soften at the temperature it was cured at. If I cured it at 60 degrees, when I took the board out in the summer when it's 100 degrees the epoxy would actually start to soften.

Best practices would dictate a post cure for like 8 hours at some temperature above what it will be used at, but less than would melt the interior EPS foam. I normally post cure at 110 for a day.

[Surfdad]

I can't get a good picture from a distance, but up close the pattern looks great! The board is remarkably stiff also.