I ended up taking your advice and sourcing a different wood for sidewalls: Wandoo (Eucalyptus Wandoo). It's a very dense Western Australian wood, apparently so dense it doesn't float in water (though I have not tested this).
I'm using recycled floorboards to be environmentally friendly. It's a very dark wood, quite good looking actually, I may have to see if I can source some veneer too.
Paulownia
Moderators: Head Monkey, kelvin, bigKam, skidesmond, chrismp
Wow - just logged into here to get get inspired for a taper/thickness flow for a pair of custom skis that have just been ordered thru our factory and I find a thread that mentions our business!falls wrote:kiteboards are a lot like wakeboards. maybe a bit smaller and a bit more pop. the ones I have ridden are pretty big though, almost small snowboard size. Makes the learning curve a lot easier!!
Definitely a lot stiffer than a snowboard though. Like wakeboard vs snowboard type of comparison.
Decay kiteboards seem a good company in NZ. Nice homegrown startup in a new industry. One of my friends toured their setup a while back and said it was pretty cool.
We not a huge operation by any means, just me designing/shaping/trimming and my wife Su doing the graphics/laminating. We have a 3x1.3m CNC router, a couple of presses and a wide format printer for graphics. Work out of a 200sqm factory in Ruakaka, a small beach town in the north of New Zealand.
I've been kiting and making kiteboards for almost 10 years now; used to snowboard a LOT in the nineties. Last year we started making snowboards for snow kiting, just a handful so far but those that have them do like them.
Our kiteboards have a 100% Paulownia core, I'm not so keen to use it on the snow yet - would need to be mixed with other timbers to work I think.
If any one wants to see more about us you can google our website which also links to our Facebook - I updated that this afternoon with some pics of one of our guys out kite snowboarding on one of our boards.
Cheers
Dave Kay
Hey Dave. Welcome to the forum.
Alex13 above in this thread has built his first snowboard with a paulownia/tassie oak mix and the above sidewall wood.
Are you guys doing dye sub graphics. If you are and by any slim chance your dye sub press could handle 1.9m would you be interested in a small outside order? Thanks.
Alex13 above in this thread has built his first snowboard with a paulownia/tassie oak mix and the above sidewall wood.
Are you guys doing dye sub graphics. If you are and by any slim chance your dye sub press could handle 1.9m would you be interested in a small outside order? Thanks.
Don't wait up, I'm off to kill Summer....
Hi Alex, we in fact do direct digital to fabric printing - mostly onto cotton but also some silk. We then add the fabric to the rest of the layup. The process has some advantages and disadvantages from dye-sub PBT, but what is nice is that we can do it in house without the need for a clean room and dye-sub press.falls wrote:Hey Dave. Welcome to the forum.
Alex13 above in this thread has built his first snowboard with a paulownia/tassie oak mix and the above sidewall wood.
Are you guys doing dye sub graphics. If you are and by any slim chance your dye sub press could handle 1.9m would you be interested in a small outside order? Thanks.
We do not offer this process as an out source I'm sorry - as we would also have to provide tech-support to get the layup 100% right - which would be giving up some of our development. However we do offer tissue prints up to 450x450mm for NZ$25 plus freight for logo sized graphics - the local surfboard shaper here uses this service a lot.
Cheers
DK