Foam Party

When You Order a New Board You Think About the Shape, Dimensions and Possibly a Fancy Spray Job. As Long as It Paddles Well and Gets You Where You Want to Be on Waves Then Your Shaper Will Be Happy. But What of the Dark Art That Produces the Foam?
 

- Sharpy

While researching rocker, tail shapes, concaves, fin systems and volume do you ever give a thought to the meat in your fibreglass sandwich? The foam blank is the heart of your board, and not all foams are created equal.

ProFoam, previously Homeblown based near Portreath, is now headed up by Martin Mynne who took over from Tris Cokes (of Tris Surfboards fame). We went for a look at the process of taking chemical soup to a ready for shaping blank.

First up what the hell do you do here?

Make surfboard blanks from start to finish. We blow the foam on site, try and source everything as locally as we can and we're really trying hard to head down the green path as much as we can. We’re talking to chemists at the moment and we’re developing new formulas for a whiter, greener foam, so we can have barrels of chemicals without skull and crossbones on them.

Has the chemistry changed since the ‘60s?

Not for most manufacturers, for us it has, as the company was originally started with a different formula. An MDI versus a TDI technology, one is basically a lot less volatile than the other. The MDI (methylene di-phenyl di-isocyanate) which we use, which took a lot of time to perfect, is safer for the end user, safer for us blowing it and it doesn’t become airborne like TDI does. So the shapers aren’t getting exposed to anything bad either. TDI (toluene diisocyanate) is toxic as hell, carcinogenic, and explosive, a total nightmare.

There must have been a lot of cul-de-sacs with regards to trying different chemical mixes?