Tech Talk: White-Line kiteboard construction
01.06.2020
This Tech Talk video explains everything there is to know about our White-Line kiteboard construction. Don’t feel like watching the video or would you rather read anyway? Below the video is a summary of what is told in the video.
White Line construction
This video is about our White Line construction kiteboards. Every White Line board starts with our 50k foam. This 50k foam is completely exclusive to Appletree surfboards. The 50k foam is a completely waterproof foam, which means that if you have a little ding your board you don’t have to worry about fixing it straight away. You can just keep going on with your
session or finish your holiday and you can fix it when you are back home.
The 50k foam really doesn’t take up any water.
What does 50K foam mean?
It’s called 50k foam, because you can actually put 50,000 kilo grams on a square meter without the foam deforming, so it’s really strong. Another great aspect of the 50k foam is that it has a really good strength in the vertical direction, while also having a really good flex in the horizontal direction. Therefore, the place where you’re standing on the foam is really strong but as a whole the board will still flex like a normal PU surfboard.
Custom build CNC machines
Our 50k foam is cut by our own CNC machines, which are machines that are custom-built by Appletree. Only our own custom build CNC machines are
able to cut 50k foam. After the cutting process on the machine is finished, the board is about 95% done. Next the board is hand finished by a person in the actual shaping bay to put down the final details, such as the rails and tail of the board.
We do everything completely different
In the next step, it’s time for the lamination of the board. In terms of lamination, again we do everything completely different from other surfboard or kiteboard builders. Appletree packs the boards in fiberglass. In between the layers we sandwich a layer of honeycomb which you
can see on the deck. At the same time, we also install the fin boxes and the leash box, and we put in all the logos.
Best balance in flex, weight and durability
Then the whole package is put into a vacuum bag without any epoxy resin. We take out all the air, then under pressure we inject the epoxy into the package and that gives the boards minimum epoxy and maximum fiber content in lamination. We are always looking for this perfect balance between the epoxy resin and fiber. If they are in perfect balance then they will give you the optimum strength. So, within this injection
method we always get the ideal ratio and the boards will come out extremely consistent in weight and strength.
Final details
After lamination the boards are almost done actually. They are completely done strengthwise, but they still need final finishing and final details on the rail. So, after lamination they are hand finished pretty much like other surfboards are. And then hand sanded by our staff in our own exclusive factory that we have in Portugal. This only takes minimal time and then the
boards are completely done and ready to be served!
Kiteboard Finder
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