SEMI-CUSTOM CONSTRUCTIONS

Our constructions have been refined since 1994 in the most hard core conditions of the Canary Islands and other hard core wave spots around the world. It´s always been a pleasure for our teamriders to try to find any weakspots before it would get to our customers. Apart from the SDT construction, it is technically simply not possible to improve the strength to weight ratio of our constructions. Even if you would be willing to pay a lot more….

Inner strength. Buying a board is investing in a good time on the water, in the healthiest drug in the world, in stress-relieve and not to cause stress. We want our own boards to last and you can profit from this. This is why we pay as much attention to making the inside of the board as strong as the outside to avoid invisible internal damage or fatigue.

A board is only as strong as its weakest component. All of our constructions are very efficient by carefully choosing materials and lay-up with a similar elasticity so they all work together in harmony. We have developed and fine tuned our constructions over many years to try to avoid practically all damages as much as technically is possible.

All boards are custom build with overlaps on rails and single, double or triple sandwich depending on the area, the sandwich and fiber reinforcements are tapared to avoid weak spots, nothing is simply cut square for ease of work. Like this the inner laminate can simply continue and is not cut or made to go around 90° corners. This very unique way of constructing a board is more labour intensive but creates the highest strength/weight ratio possible. Which is why won´t show how this is exactly done.

With the introduction of our in house developed CNC CAD/CAM production system, we can prepare and produce all EPS and sandwich parts necesary to produce the boards, down to the 0.1mm exact for a perfect fit, ready to be assembled. Even all inserts are cut out by CNC to make sure everything is at the exact angle without any extra play, avoiding room for error and excessiv resin use.

There are 3 constructions per range available:

-SDT. Single, Double, Triple sandwich with 1 year guarantee
E-glass (70%), Carbon (15%),Dyneema® (5%)-epoxy-Single-Double-Triple sandwich. 1 year guarantee*. With full high quality dense woven E-glass on top and bottom, overlapping on the rails plus carbon and Dyneema reinforcements. Our most economical construction with a very high strength/weight ratio.

-CBC: Custom Biaxial Carbon with 2 years guarantee
Carbon (40%) + Quadaxial-e-glass- Dyneema (8%)- epoxy-Single-Double-Triple sandwich. Made with Aviation grade carbon UD, custom layed up to build a bi and tri-directional carbon with an optimized fibre orientation on deck and bottom, overlapping on the rails. The nose area on deck and bottom are made with quad-axial high grade, tight woven e-glass for better flex and impact properties than with full carbon.

-HDD. Heavy Duty Dyneema with 3 years guarantee
-Dyneema® (60%)-Carbon (15%)-glass-epoxy-single-double-triple sandwich. Our famous Heavy Duty Dyneema® construction with 36 months guarantee*. With full Dyneema on top and bottom, overlapping on the rails. Another first from Witchcraft, the specialists in full Dyneema boards since 1995.

-FCBC: Full Custom Biaxial Carbon with 1 year guarantee*
Carbon(65%), Dyneema (8%) epoxy-Single-Double- sandwich.
Made with full Carbon UD-biax on deck and bottom, layed up in optimised angles of the fibre orientation for each area, overlapping on the rails. Similar as the CBC but now the carbon is completely replacing the E-glass all over nose and tail both on bottom and deck, making the board extremely light but also stiff and more fragile for impact. Glass reinforments on the nose. Glass is twice as impact resistant as carbon.

The SDT construction is roughly about 50% more durable compared to the average production board.

CBC is stronger and lighter than SDT and offers a good compromise between weight, longevity, impact resistance and a nice crisp feeling without being too stiff. Durability is about twice that of most production boards.

HDD is Witchcraft´s most famous construction since 20 years with an unmatched impact resistance and a durability of about 3 to 4 times that of average boards.

All our boards are also made to be repair friendly, the most brittle materials are placed on the outside so can be easily replaced in case something does happen. The bottoms and noses are kept white for an easy touch up as paint is not as strong as Dyneema or Glass. The foot strap plugs can easily be drilled up to the next screw size or replaced when they fail after many uses.

The lifespan together with the production in Europe also means that our boards make far less impact on the environment.

ABOUT DYNEEMA

Since 1994, under the tough demands of the conditions on Fuerte, Witchcraft started using Dyneema® fibre as the main fibre in their boards. Dyneema* is the strongest fibre on the market. It is very light, even lighter than water but has a very high tenacity and energy absorption. Still it is stiffer than Kevlar and glass fibre, being slightly more flexible than carbon. It also has a long flex life and is not brittle as carbon or glass.

Comparison of technical properties of different fibres used in wind surfboards:

	Density	strength	energy required for penetration
	gr/cm³	N/Tex	Jm²/kg
Carbon	1.78	1.9	1
Glass	2.60	1.35	2
Aramid (kevlar)	1.45	2.05	6.5
Dyneema®*	0.97	3.1	12.5

*) DSM´s registered trademark for High Performance Polyethylene Fiber

Apart from the price, the problem with Dyneema is that it is hard to work with, hard to cut, to sand and to laminate. It requires high quality workmanship, since irregularities cannot be corrected afterwards.

With Dyneema it is practically impossible to puncture the board. On impact there may be a dent which can be heated out with a hairdryer or hot air gun, since the sandwich material we use has memory and returns to it´s original shape over 70° C. On heavy impacts, the thin layer of glass fibre covering the Dyneema for the finish, may crack, the Dyneema will usually still be intact to stop water penetrating the board and will have prevented breakage inside the board.

For 20 years we are using Chinook mast boxes which we shorten to reduce weight.

The Chinook mast box is tough and also has a safety mast foot stopper. This prevents the mast foot to slide out of the mast box in case it becomes undone. This has already prevented some very awkward and dangerous situations.

Footstraps mounted with 4 screws.

We use a specially selected Epoxy resin that matches the properties of Dyneema fiber.
We add a bit of blue epoxy pigment to the resin to have a visual check of the amount and uniform saturation of the fibres and EPS.
Reinforcements are ending in points to avoid potential weak spots.

Finbox reinforcements are mounted below the sandwich, giving the sandwich and inner laminate a direct contact to the box and the reinforcement block a much wider contact area to the sandwich. Most custom brands mount the reinforcement block after the sandwich.

We have also developed various secret construction details on the inside, to make boards stronger and to prevent fatigue.

We know that it looks more convincing if companies reveal how a board is built up from the inside. However it also means they have nothing better that they want to keep secret. Since we do have stuff we don´t want our competition to know how and why we do it, you´ll have to take our word for it and let our guarantee conditions convince you.

We are also the first company to actually tell the amounts of different fibres we use in our boards, just like is common with masts for many years.
*Functionality first: All boards are equipped with Witchcraft G10 CNC milled pretwistet fins , double density ergonomic pads, ergonomic straps, four screws per strap. The airvalve is O-ring-less so that you do not have to worry about it breaking/leaking.