All Carbon Fiber SUP!!!

After gaining experience with carbon fiber reinforcement in our paddles and blades, we were determined to eventually move away from fiberglass and go 100% carbon fiber as soon as we could.

See this post from 2012: carbon-fiber-molding

With the vast yardage in a SUP we wanted to have the process down pretty well before we committed to the increased material cost.
This year we are doing it.  All of our boards from now on will be 100% carbon fiber.
These are hollow structural skin boards.
No Foam !  No Glass !
We got an order for a board and went ahead and put in a big order with our CF supplier.
Today we pulled our first all CF deck.

Sea State CF12 deck.

Our new roll of CF cloth!

Carbon Fiber molding

We have worked out all the kinks in the carbon fiber molding of our Cahokia blades.
The blades are made with a 6.2 oz large checkerboard weave carbon cloth.
Initially we where having bubbles in the finished surface that required either rejecting the part or costly finish re-work time.  Our improvement came when we modified our vacuum form to pull the bagging film from above the part with no breather material.
It progressively clings to the part and does not trap air.

The parts spend little time in the vac because we still have Missouri summer weather.  We pop them free and set them in the sun to finish curing.  We will shortly get on the shaft mandril form.  That will be fun to figure out.

Stay tuned...

Carbon fiber molding

We bought a few yards of plane weave carbon fiber cloth to see what all the fuss is about.
We have used carbon fiber tape in all the ferrules and throats of our blades.  It seemed to raise the breaking strength of the ferrule but we haven't gotten scientific about destructive testing yet.
But low and behold, blades made exclusively with CF are noticeably stiffer and over 2 oz lighter.
Here is the cloth we are using: