Going to the Plus One factory is like a kid going to Disneyland. From the rack of expermental boards, customer rides, and the killer shaping machine, these guys have it down. Everything stays in house, from the day the blank arrives to the day it leaves in your ride.
One of the many Plus one Projects, this one here is an experimental Asymm surfboard. These guys are always down to experiment with new technology, reinvent old designs, and really like to push the limit to see where they can go next.
The crew are definately stepping it up this time with their latest out of the box project.
When George told me what the plan was for this board, I knew this was going to be my first Board Room write up. Lights in a SUP? If anyone would be willing to do it, it would be George and Joe. The customer wanted to use this board off his dock in San Diego Bay at night. The lights are capable of 7 hours at full intensity on a single battery charge and will be set up to flash at I believe 3 flashes a second to attract night life. To keep from overheating, the lights are set to turn of when they reach 130 degrees to keep bad things from happening.
That's the light housing, mocked up in scrap divinycell. The lighting system is custom, from the same manufacturer who built the lights for the underwater vehicles that explored the Titanic. The lights are capable of lighting up 15' of water.
Pre-glassing. You can see the three divinycell inserts in the board. Divinycell is the trademark name of PVC foam. PVC foam doesn't soak up water like EPS and is stronger. George and Joe used the divinycell to reinforce the area where the lights are being installed for strength and to keep water from being absorbed into the EPS foam core of the board if damage to the glass around the lights were to occur.
Post glassing, definately a work of art...
You have to be nuts to want to take a router to a board like that...
The light holes drilled out.
The light housings getting mocked up.
Test fitting the light housing.
Glued up and ready for glassing.
First layer of carbon laid up.
The hatch opening that will house all the components.
The hardware: More about this later.
I can't wait to see the end results. Still much more to do with the wiring and reinforcement of the light housings. Keep checking in for more updates and its first ride in the water!
Mike P - mike@surfcraftint.com
1 comment:
This is soooo Cool. I wish I could have this done to my boards. Can't wait to see the end results!
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