gary young doesn't use much fibreglass on his boards, only a small amount down the length of the rails. The bamboo is the predominant fibre in gary's construction
This does not make any sense, unless the load on the board sandwich is never stressed to the point where skin fail anyway. I've been playing with graphing the stiffness of sandwich panels in scilab and the things that strikes me is how little strength the laminate have vs. the strength of a sandwich at the thickness Greg is using. Basically with the layups used and thin skins there is very little load on the core. Even with the relatively stiff bamboo core and only 2oz cloth both sides, the bamboo core by it self would be considerably less than half the strength of the sandwich.
I'm just going on what the man himself told me!
Still, it doesn't make any sense
Gary uses multiple layers of "Epoxy Saturated" bamboo veneer inplace of fiberglass.. He calls it "fibergrass".
Epoxy saturation interacts with bamboo veneer for a covering that's as strong if not stronger than the man made fabric which is basically woven flexible glass(silica) fibers. He also uses many layers not just one or two and varies the amount of layers depending on their location on the board's structure. I posted a cutaway picture of Gary's composite technique away back than Paul said was not good to show you all.. Alot of technique all in one picture. There's also a bulletproof/hurricane resistant film he applies to the finished surface for added protection. If you think of what it does for storm proofing glass windows and bulletproofing glass car windows you can see the benefits for the epoxied bamboo skin of a surfcraft.. Surprised no one has thought of that before.
Huie and Loehr are just getting the composite process closer to the needs of a production operation without losing any benefits of the composite design. Loehr has deep ties to Warvel(who he brought in to Firewire to Bert's protest) and Resin Research which is why Paul is trying to wipe some of the fog off everyone's goggles here. I guess Greg's due some reward for all the years he's put in to the tech.
Huie I found this stuff called "Last-a-Foam" 6lb density and way cheaper than corecell with a similar texture. Is that it or is it Rohacell which is notoriously expensive being that it's used for yahts, planes and F1 racers.
