Like a lot of us, I first came across XTR10 in a video from Noel Salas where they ran over one of their foam blanks with a car. After seeing a board go through my worst nightmare in a beach parking lot and come out relatively unscathed, I figured I had to call XTR and see what the hell this wizardry was.
I got in touch with Shey Yates, who recently took over as president of XTR Epoxy Technology from founder Javier Huarcaya-Pro (who has moved on to focus on the R&D side of the business). “That was obviously like a kind of attention grabber more than anything,” he said of the Salas video. “We actually have scientific tools that we use, but not as cool looking as a car running over some blanks.”
In fact, the production of a new foam formula requires quite a lot of scientific tools. It’s a process that’s part scientific method, part trial and error. Over and over and over again, they would slightly tweak the formula of raw materials that went into the foam, then basically see what happened. “We work with the chemists and then we kind of see what we were at before and what we changed,” said Shey. “You know, previous batches were not as white or previous batches had too much flex or previous batches were too closed cell, where they would just melt on the machine.”
After many, many iterations, they landed on XTR10. “The orientation of the extruded polystyrene cell being an oval shape gives it the compression strength much more than PU or EPS. Then there’s also the color of the foam being like white and bright and then the flex pattern of the foam being not too flimsy and not to too much stiffness out of it, just kind of refinement of all those factors together,” said Shey. He also notes that the success of XTR10 isn’t just from the foam itself. “The epoxy resins have just come a long way over the years as well. So getting those together and finding the best ones in the industry and finding which one works with our foam core the best,” he said. “XTR10, it’s kind of the culmination of both.”
Underfoot, Shey says the new foam combines the benefits of epoxy with the feel of PU that most surfers grew up with. “With epoxy surfboards, [shapers] are all trying to chase that PU poly feeling, because that’s what we’re all used to growing up and it’s the industry standard.” Shey explained that shapers will often try to dampen the EPS, whether with a deck skin or carbon, to make it feel more like poly, but the slightly higher density of extruded polystyrene creates a different solution to the issue. “Our foam is closed cell and it doesn’t sit on top of the water and have that kind of overly buoyant chattery feeling. I call it more of a ‘true to poly feel,’ where it cuts through the chop and surfs like a poly underfoot, but has all of the benefits of epoxy, with the durability, liveliness and the responsive pop,” he explained.
So, if extruded polystyrene is so awesome, at least according to the people who make it, why isn’t it more prevalent? “If you talk in the industry about XTR, people always say it’s a little bit more difficult to shape, just because of the closed cell nature of it,” explains Shey. “When you shape EPS or PU it’s just real easy. Production shapers are banging out as many as they can in a day, and they would run into an XTR and it’s like a brick wall.”
The other issue that makes extruded polystyrene especially difficult to shape with is that the boards have a habit of delaminating themselves. The same closed-cell construction that prevents the foam from absorbing water also leads to the release of gas even after the board has been glassed. XTR’s solution to this issue is to create tiny perforations on the deck, through the glass and into the blank, that allow the foam to release gas without delamination. “We call them thermovents,” said Shey. “Because our XTR foam core is waterproof, it doesn’t affect the board in any way. All it does is prevent delamination.”
In order to do this, XTR has developed a special machine to create the vents. While it solves the problem of delamination, it also de-facto keeps the foam out of the hands of home shapers. XTR also has three patents on its production process, specifically regarding the installation of the thermovents, which means they are currently the only company that can do it. While they’ve toyed with the idea of licensing out the technology in the past (Eric Arakawa has a thermoventing machine), they found that it becomes hard to control the product when others start having access to manufacturing and have opted to keep it in-house.
As a result, this has allowed XTR to carve out an interesting niche in the world of shaping. “We don’t have our own label,” Shey told me. “We license the other brands intellectual property, which is, you know, their shapes and their logos. And then we take the orders directly from the customer on our website, and then we place that order with the company. We get the CNC file and the logos, and then we make the board and deliver it straight to the consumer. We currently do all the manufacturing in our factory. All of the shapers shape their own boards. Obviously they have ghost shapers, but they’re all shapers that have been approved by the brand.” There are a few exceptions, such as …Lost, Timmy Patterson and Roberts, who shape in their own factories, but luckily most of those factories are just down the street. “Most of the surfboard industry is in our little bubble in Oceanside,” Shey explained.
New CI boards being shaped in the XTR factory. Photo: XTR
As to the future, Shey says that XTR is looking to continue on the refinement of their formula, while also taking steps to become more eco-friendly. Shey told me that in the future, they would like to focus on “going a little more green,” by using materials such as bioresins. “We’ve always been into that,” he went on. “Using more sustainable materials is a big thing for us and has always been on our minds and something we always try to achieve.”
Funny enough, that insane durability that allowed Javier to drive over an XTR blank while Noel Salas gleefully cheered on may also be a key piece of the puzzle in that push towards sustainability. “We always say ‘the most eco-friendly surfboard is the one that lasts the longest,’” explained Shey. “They’re gonna be made, so we might as well make fewer of them and make more that last. Our boards last years and years. They stay out of landfills.”
