Tech Talk: How long do epoxy surfboards last?

What’s up everyone? Welcome back to another Appletree Surfboards Tech Talk video. My name is Wieger and we’re here in beautiful Cape Town. And today we’re going to talk about a question that we got from a viewer: how long do epoxy surfboards actually last?

Epoxy vs PU surfboards

It’s not a super complicated thing. I just want to take it one step back. So traditional surfboards are made from polyester resin. That’s a different chemical resin than epoxy resin. Nowadays most of the surfboards that we ride for kiting specifically are made from epoxy instead of polyester.

PU will deteriorate over time

The biggest difference is that Polyester will be super nice and crisp when it’s new, but it actually deteriorates quite quickly over time due to UV ray influence, but also just by aging. So a traditional PU polyester surfboard will not really last long and will get brittle and crackly when it gets a bit older.

Epoxy is more durable

Epoxy has a few downsides, but one of the major upsides is that the structure in the board will basically stay the same for the duration of the board. And now in our boards, because we also use the 50K foam that’s inside of the boards, it actually works super well together with the epoxy and the fiberglass. It gives you a board that has the same kind of pop and feeling of a new PU board, but then with the added durability of having an epoxy board.

There is an age to every board

You can expect to get five, six, seven years out of such a board easily even with intense riding. So yeah, there is an age to every board. I would never advise getting a board that is over, let’s say five years old because they do slowly deteriorate in the material. It sort of wears out even though the board might still look new, but in general it lasts quite a long time. But an epoxy board definitely outlasts any PU polyester that’s out there.

That was it for this month. Hope you liked this video. Subscribe to our channel to see more of the other videos that we have and some interviews with some team riders and I’ll hope to see you in the next one.

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