{"id":647958,"date":"2026-05-04T21:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/647958\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T21:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T21:10:13","slug":"zack-flores-surfs-a-literal-chunk-of-foam-and-he-does-it-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/647958\/","title":{"rendered":"Zack Flores Surfs a Literal Chunk of Foam (and He Does It Well)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Zack<\/p>\n

Zack Flores taking \u201cback to the basics\u201d to a whole new level. Photos: YouTube\/\/Screenshot<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Surfboard shapers don\u2019t get enough credit. They take hunk of foam and carve them into the most beautiful arrows of fun. The little details that turn an average board into a magic one are held in the minds of shapers. Knowing how to surf well is important for a person making surfboards, because those little tweaks make huge differences in how a surfboard rides. Zack Flores is both an amazing shaper and an amazing surfer. But what happens when every single one of those little tweaks goes out the window? Well, Flores decided to take a raw chunk of surfboard foam out into the lineup to see.<\/p>\n

Flores grabbed a raw XTR (extruded polystyrene) foam blank. No glass. No finish. Just foam right out of the factory. XTR is an interesting material<\/a>. It\u2019s incredibly strong and flexible, but it\u2019s a little harder to work with than some other surfboard materials.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you talk in the industry about XTR, people always say it\u2019s a little bit more difficult to shape, just because of the closed cell nature of it,\u201d Shey Yates, president of XTR Epoxy Technology, explained<\/a>. \u201cWhen you shape EPS or PU it\u2019s 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\u2019s like a brick wall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another issue with XTR is that boards made with it delam pretty quickly. That same closed-cell construction that stops water absorption also leads to a release of gas once the glass is on. There are ways around that, but if you don\u2019t glass it\u2026 well, you don\u2019t have to worry about delamination.<\/p>\n

Flores knew that this \u201csurfboard\u201d might not go all that well, but something strange happened. He did make a few small adjustments, but nothing that you\u2019d expect would make a surfboard work better.<\/p>\n

\u201cI honestly didn\u2019t expect much,\u201d Flores said<\/a>, \u201cbut the results were surprising.\u00a0This is our XTR blank that we cut down. Turned it into a golfball diffuser bottomed rectangle based off of the Ryan Burch<\/a> Chunk of Foam.\u201d<\/p>\n

Flores, of course, is a much better than the average surfer. He\u2019s talented on pretty much anything, but riding a finless piece of foam this well seems almost criminal.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zack Flores taking \u201cback to the basics\u201d to a whole new level. Photos: YouTube\/\/Screenshot Surfboard shapers don\u2019t get…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":647959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[49,48,66,240996,240997,240998],"class_list":["post-647958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-surfboard-shaping","tag-xtr-foam","tag-zack-flores"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=647958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/647958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/647959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=647958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=647958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=647958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}