Help me Design Longboard

General Composites Discussions Composites Talk
#1

Ok so I have been thinking about building a carbon fiber longboard for some time now, but here is my dilemma.

It sounds like a good layup is a wood core with maybe 2 layers of CF of each side, however I am not sure how to vacuum infuse this and at the same time get the wood to be concave. I could press the wood though I don’t have that set up, but then the wood will be bent and I don’t know how to vacuum infuse on to that.

Or I can just do a flat long board which would be super simple to layup and infuse, however I have heard flat long boards suck to ride. Could I use a flexible core material such as Soric Infusible Core which I have instead of wood? Is there a way to infuse on the wood after it has been formed?

Basically, how do I infuse with a bent piece of wood, or is having a flat long board going to not be that big of a deal?

Thanks for any input!

#2

I’m in the same boat as you… been thinking about making one now for a while.

Ultimately, make a mold. Luckily one of my coworkers has a mold made of aluminum I’ll start with. I don’t think a flat board would be too great. Plus if you have some shape to it, you’ll have a stronger piece as well.

Soric is great stuff. It adds good stiffness and is less heavy than foam cores that i’ve used. I personally don’t want to use wood, as to me it seems like defeating the point of using carbon. It’s simpler yes, but more like for looks. I guess it does add strength and you could use less wood but, why bother with the wood at all if that’s the case?

To answer your question about infusing on the wood. Yes you can surely. I would just layup the wood board with my carbon then setup the infusion in an envelope bag with the flow media and tubes, inlets, vac ports, etc. like normal. Then infuse, both side should be fine if the setup is ok.

I had intially planned on doing a flat board on my glass table for experimentation purposes. Still I think even shaping a mold from foam probably would be a better place to start. You could also shape some foam and pull a mold from it. Or you could even use a board that’s premade and turn it into your mold.

NOt sure if that helps? But I think you’re on the right track.

#3

You can:

Press the wood shape, put it all in an envelope bag, and infuse it;
Make a mould, layup all of your layers dry and toghether, and then infuse,

And offcourse, use an other core materials. But snowboards have wood cores for a reason :wink:

I’m planning on doing an infusion of a composite longboard in the next few weeks on a mould. I’ll try to make a video :slight_smile:

#4

Cool, looking forward to seeing how it turns out. Once I get to work on my own, I’ll post some progress… right now I’m way too stretched!