Words.Ben Perreira When Clark Foam closed its doors in December of 2005, it is safe to say that the entire surf industry was rather freaked out for what the future held. Shapers didn’t know where they would get their foam after all of the precious Clark blanks were used up, surf shops didn’t know how they would keep their shelves stocked with fresh equipment, and surfers didn’t know where they would be getting their new shred-sticks.
In the few weeks following the Clark closure, surf shops bought boards en masse and held their stock until they got word boards would come again, and surfers paid top-dollar for anything they could get their hands on, thinking their new board could be their last ever! Shapers bought all the Clark Foam they could to add fat for the winter. However, they knew that the whole thing would eventually level out, with blank producers like Bennet Dion, King Mac and, later, Eskimo coming from Australia to fill the void, as well as longtime domestic producer Walker and the newer US Blanks, which arose from the ashes of Clark Foam to take the place of its predecessor. Around the same time there was also a lot of speculation that EPS foam, which was almost completely absent from custom surfboard production before the Clark closure, would play a large part in the future of surfboard technology.
Many surfers remained unsure about the future, even as high quality polyurethane foam began to trickle into the market by spring 2006 and new boards were once again finding their way to surf shops and into lineups. Board-builders had raised prices $50-$75 for a shortboard and customers expected those prices to go down as new foam was more readily available. Makes sense – prices go up when supply is down and go back down when supply is up.
Enter resin, or rather, petroleum. In the months before the closure of Clark Foam, unbeknownst to the consumer, resin prices had begun to elevate to the point that there was a buzz that surfboard builders would soon raise prices by around $50 per board. Between 2004 and 2005 the average price of a gallon of gas rose by over $0.40. What do these equally painful but seemingly unrelated statistics have in common? Gasoline, of course, is derived from petroleum and polyurethane, like all plastics, is also petroleum based. Even as the prices of gasoline kept going up in the year prior to the Clark Foam closure, the price of surfboards stayed the same and shapers were absorbing those costs.
In the spring of 2006, when foam blank prices had more or less leveled out, shapers were beginning to see that they might be able to regain a place in the market in which they would be able to make a profit on surfboard sales by leaving prices at their post-Clark level. Here is the problem: nobody told the consumer. Surf shops did their best by telling customers that prices were going to stay the same and never go back to pre-Clark prices, but never effectively explained why.
The result can be called the Clark Foam Hangover for surfboard builders and surf shops. On top of La Nina-like conditions – colder than average water and air, and fewer than average solid, North Pacific storms during the winter of 2006-2007, the Hangover left boards to yellow on the racks at surf shops and shapers wondering what the heck had happened. Many surfers were still of the mindset that the price of surfboards would go down, even though there was no projection that they would, and few wanted to pay these new, higher prices for a board that would sit in the garage during small, junky, ice-cold winter.
The good news is that the surf world has gotten out of bed, taken some Advil and eaten a greasy breakfast and the Hangover is over. Fall, the best time for surf throughout most of the West Coast, is upon us and winter is just around the corner, just in time to order up a new shredder to try out in some epic, crispy-morning conditions.
These struggles fought through the Clark Foam Hangover have yielded an entirely new dynamic that includes new materials, stringer configurations and glassing methods. Immediately following the Apocalypse, and even before in very limited quantities, we saw extruded polystyrene (EPS) boards glassed with epoxy resin available from many major shapers. These board have become the norm for manufacturers like Oceanside’s Ezera Surfboards, which pumps out about a hundred boards a week, seventy percent of which are EPS. Below is a breakdown of the different types of foam available and what it will look like for the surfer in the long run.
EPS: Extruded polystyrene, glassed with epoxy resin
Pros: More durable, lighter, livelier
Cons: More expensive, longer turnaround time means it takes longer to get custom boards, can feel too stiff
Environmental Viability: Last longer so you need fewer boards, which means fewer materials to contaminate the landfills, (click to see how you can reuse old boards); also the foam often comes in large blocks so there is more waste to get to a finished blank
Cost: About $75 more for a standard shortboard
PU: Polyurethane, generally glassed with polyester resin
Pros: Cheap, easy to shape and glass, can be glassed with epoxy if properly sealed
Cons: Heavier than EPS foam thus less buoyant, more susceptible to breaking
Environmental Viability: Plastics don’t biodegrade well and are toxic when burned, fumes from polyester resin are also more toxic than epoxy
Cost: A PU shortboard is going to cost you around $525
Before you get on the phone with your shaper, there are a few more factors to consider. One of them is the location of the stringer. In early 2006 Firewire Surfboards brought the parabolic stringer to the mainstream market and since then several foam manufacturers have come out with slightly cheaper alternatives that are available to every shaper. Firewire’s process is unique in that the EPS blank is shaped, then the wooden stringers are added to the rails before a thin layer of high-density foam, fiberglass and epoxy resin are used to finish the process. Parabolic stringers allow the board to flex more than normal without breaking or wearing out, and they for greater variability in the board’s flex patterns even over a standard EPS blank by adding extra fiberglass to certain areas of the board. Parabolic stringer blanks are available in PU or EPS and may add some cost to your board.
Further evidence that the Hangover has officially ended is that top ASP World Tour professionals have been using this new-age technology in competition. These are guys who won’t stray an eighth of an inch in thickness on their competition boards, and suddenly they are talking about EPS blanks and parabolic stringers. Take CJ Hobgood, for example, who rode a Bill Johnson-shaped EPS board at the 2006 US Open. And remember that Stealth Quad that he used to win the Body Globe Surfbout this past July at Lower Trestles? That was made from a polyurethane blank glassed with epoxy resin. Taj Burrow has been riding Firewire’s technology since the mid-2006, and he won the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach in April and the Billabong Pro J-Bay in July of 2007 riding Firewires. Most recently, at the 2007 Boost Mobile Pro, JS team riders Occy, Parko and Bruce Irons each rode parabolic stringer, carbon fiber railed boards during competition.
This is the beginning of the future. The future of wave riding will be surfers performing space-age maneuvers on boards with space-age technology. Gone are the days that all the boards on the rack at your local surf shop are PU blanks glassed with polyester resin. From now and going forward we will see parabolic stringers, EPS, PU with epoxy, carbon fiber, and a litany of other new features. Don’t be afraid, fellow surfer, the new technology is made to make you surf better and your boards last longer, so go out, spend a few extra dollars and try something that will completely blow your mind.
