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Hi Alex,
Using composites in your kite-surfing boards will certainly enable you to strengthen then up and drop weight out at the same time and can actually be relatively straight forward to do, depending on how fancy you want to be with it.
The carbon fibre 'skinning' process is really used to describe a single layer of carbon fibre being applied to something (for the carbon fibre appearance) although it's essentially exactly the same as laminating multiple layers of carbon onto something (for stiffness) with the exception that you don't need to use a black 'basecoat' if you're applying multiple layers of carbon because there is no danger of the board's colour showing through the weave pattern as soon as you have more than one layer of carbon over it. This means that although the process will be very similar to that which you see in the Carbon Mods skinning video (our sister company) for our purposes we'll really just describe this as laminating and skip the basecoat stage.
Onto the job itself; multiple layers of carbon wet out with epoxy resin will add plenty of stiffness to your boards so you can certainly thin-down that core. How much you thin it down depends on the feel you want from the board and I'll leave up to you. If you stick with a mahogany core then that's certainly a very dense core; usually we would use something lower density for the core (who's main purpose in life is simply keeping the two outer skins in position) like balsa, cork, foam etc., but again you can experiment with what materials are right for you. I would think that dropping to a lower density core would be a good move because the core itself will add little to the stiffness of the board but something as dense as mahogany will certainly contribute a lot of weight.
The outer 'skin' of reinforcement can be applied to your core by simply preparing the board surface to ensure that it is clean, dust and grease free and has a good 'keyed' surface (coarse abrasive paper). Apply a high performance epoxy laminating resin (like our EL-2) to one side of the board and then layer your carbon fibre (or other reinforcement) onto the wet resin. Repeat the resin application (try to only apply as much as the fabric naturally wants to hold) and then add your next layer of reinforcement.
Depending on the compressive strength of the core you use I would think somewhere between 2 layers (for a dense core with high compressive strength) to 6 layers (low density core like foam) of 200gsm 2/2 twill carbon fibre would be appropriate. By doing one face at a time you should then be able to stretch release film over the whole surface of the board (over the wet resin and reinforcement) and then pull it really tight and tape it down to the reverse of the board. Because release film is translucent you can see through it to the laminate and then use a squeegee (like a credit card) to squeeze out any excess resin or air bubbles.
Once cured you can easily remove the release film which should leave a near perfect smooth, shiny gloss finish to that size of the board after which you can tidy up the edges and then repeat the process for the other side of the board.
I hope this gives you some good ideas and some confidence to give this a try because you should be able to get great results for little expense which you can then enjoy out on the water!
All the best, Matt
Matt Statham
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Sales
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