WTB surfboard

[Chaos]

Actually, Patagonia pioneered the use of extruded polystyrene on a commercial basis years before XTR jumped on it. We all played with it a lot in the 90s.
Patagonia's sold their blanks for a number of years, they were high quality white extruded. You can get surf quality extruded from marko foam, which is basically the same as patagonia used and the same white extruded XTR uses. the blue stuff is just dyed extruded (dow's typical color). You can get extruded in a few of densities, light densities are used for wall insulation, heavier densities (usually green) are used for flooring insulation/flooring boards. The available white extruded is pretty heavy, comparable to heavy EPS, like 2.4 pcf, similar to really light weight polyurethane. However, as I noted above it really does not have the flexural benefits of EPS, which is one reason patagonia mostly uses marko EPS now for performance board and PU for old school longboards. When Clark foam closed extruded foams became of some interest again, but they are dying right back with extremely limited use. EPS has taken over high performance, the reign of PU has basically ended, and varial is just not what is was promised to be. Comparably heavy, stinky (awful isopropyl alcohol smell), not really white, sort of off white yellowish cream in color and still too expensive right now for the board market. If they fix a few issues it might become more popular. Every decade someone tries to reinvent the surfboard, but from ski companies, to nasa to auto industry engineers, but it never happens.

[muehlcj]

Actually, Patagonia pioneered the use of extruded polystyrene on a commercial basis years before XTR jumped on it. We all played with it a lot in the 90s.
Patagonia's sold their blanks for a number of years, they were high quality white extruded. You can get surf quality extruded from marko foam, which is basically the same as patagonia used and the same white extruded XTR uses. the blue stuff is just dyed extruded (dow's typical color). You can get extruded in a few of densities, light densities are used for wall insulation, heavier densities (usually green) are used for flooring insulation/flooring boards. The available white extruded is pretty heavy, comparable to heavy EPS, like 2.4 pcf, similar to really light weight polyurethane. However, as I noted above it really does not have the flexural benefits of EPS, which is one reason patagonia mostly uses marko EPS now for performance board and PU for old school longboards. When Clark foam closed extruded foams became of some interest again, but they are dying right back with extremely limited use. EPS has taken over high performance, the reign of PU has basically ended, and varial is just not what is was promised to be. Comparably heavy, stinky (awful isopropyl alcohol smell), not really white, sort of off white yellowish cream in color and still too expensive right now for the board market. If they fix a few issues it might become more popular. Every decade someone tries to reinvent the surfboard, but from ski companies, to nasa to auto industry engineers, but it never happens.

^ what he’s said. Plus Hyperlite has exclusive agreement with varial on wake right now.