There are still a few left

Since this will be my first post in the Shaping Bay I will start where the board starts and that is the foam.

When Gordon Clark closed his factory 2 years ago the common theme was this was the end. It didn’t take very long for a variety of companies to fill the void.  Where at one time in US , board builders had their choice of basically one supplier they now had a choice of many suppliers.  Everyone was in hurry to “be the next Clark Foam”.  Here on the East Coast we filled the immediate void with 3 different suppliers from Brazil. Rhyno, Teccel and VI.

Shortly there after foam from the west coast showed up from Walker and King Mac and from South Africa, Safari.  Within a year we now had foam from US Blanks, Eskimo, Bennett and SurfBlanks. There were, and are others but these are the ones we had seen in the mid-atlantic area. We also saw the introduction of the MDI foam from Ice 9 and Warvel. With a shortage of Urethane foams we saw the increase in EPS or styrofoam blanks and resurgence of epoxy boards. Pretty confusing for a builder , but even more so for the consumer.

Another year later and the cream appears to be rising to the top.  Several west coast companies didn’t make it and have ceased operations, Bennett, King Mac and Walker. The companies from Brazil have scaled back on the imports and in the mid-atlantic there are no nearby distributors. All the urethane foam companies that are left produce a good product and what we are seeing is mostly used US Blanks, Surfblanks, Eskimo and Rhyno. They all have slightly different properties but I believe all are comparable to the Clark Foam. With time, we are even seeing improvements to where some of the stuff could be classified as better than Clark Foam.  Later I will try to explain the differences between urethane foams and EPS foams.     – Scott