New Here and have a question about a core material.

[twizzstyle]

I get my bamboo from a place called Bamboo Hardwoods in Seattle. It is just bamboo flooring boards. The issue I had was I used horizontal grain bamboo on a pair, and the middle layer of the boards had the grain running laterally, and it was a very loose grain with lots of gaps. I landed hard on the tails a few weeks ago, and that middle layer of bamboo ripped apart just behind my heel binding. Lesson learned - vertical grain bamboo only!

[WhitePine]

I'll just throw out some of my experience working with polycarbonate (PC). For my job we had an application where we had to bond several different types of materials to the PC. We tried several types of plastics and foils. Not much would work well to get a durable bond. We tried UV curable adhesives, silicone based glues, etc. None would bond well unless the surface of the PC was textured. This allowed the adhesive to create a sort of mechanical bond to the surface of the materials being joined (similar to applying teflon to a cooking pan, or better yet, think of velcro except on a microscopic scale).

However, as soon as the parts were flexed the components started to fail and separate. The only thing that seemed to work was plasma treating each surface with argon to change the surface energy. Then we held them together in a fixture and applied heat. Afterwards we couldn't pull them apart. The plasma treating was extremely finicky though. It took a lot of work to get it just right.

The take away from all this is, you may get it to bond, but I would be a little skeptical having it strapped to my feet when dropping into a couloir or something. To be fair we were using only a few grades of PC and there are tons of different flavors out there so maybe it will work. I totally think you should test it and see if it survives flexing. Do your research or call the companies and find a PC that has good bondability.

[propellanttech]

I'll just throw out some of my experience working with polycarbonate (PC). For my job we had an application where we had to bond several different types of materials to the PC. We tried several types of plastics and foils. Not much would work well to get a durable bond. We tried UV curable adhesives, silicone based glues, etc. None would bond well unless the surface of the PC was textured. This allowed the adhesive to create a sort of mechanical bond to the surface of the materials being joined (similar to applying teflon to a cooking pan, or better yet, think of velcro except on a microscopic scale).

However, as soon as the parts were flexed the components started to fail and separate. The only thing that seemed to work was plasma treating each surface with argon to change the surface energy. Then we held them together in a fixture and applied heat. Afterwards we couldn't pull them apart. The plasma treating was extremely finicky though. It took a lot of work to get it just right.

The take away from all this is, you may get it to bond, but I would be a little skeptical having it strapped to my feet when dropping into a couloir or something. To be fair we were using only a few grades of PC and there are tons of different flavors out there so maybe it will work. I totally think you should test it and see if it survives flexing. Do your research or call the companies and find a PC that has good bondability.

Thanks for the insight.

I was actually going to try a miniature version of a snow board without the edges with the same layup. This would tell me if it could be done.

The flexing is ultimately the test of the bonding.

James