Nick

Like in previous Tests I am a bit baffled by Prime’s ability to produce a board that looks and feels like it’s a beginner, but rises well above its station. It’s heavy and it’s so strong it feels like rock, and I tried and failed to punch a hole in it – couldn’t even raise a dent. But it paddled easily and once on a wave it rode exactly how its shape suggested, working off the double concave, nice even turns, and it didn’t bog out the way a six-kilo board should. It was a bit of a shock and a real lesson as to the value of shape against everything else in a board. The shape was true so the board was too.

Tai

I’d like to think there’s a place in surfing for a board that’s bulletproof – I think everyone’s favourite board always ends up snapping, which sucks! But I don’t ride epoxy vacuum laminate- type boards normally, and I wasn’t sure about this one until I rode it – and it felt good! It does need a bigger guy to ride it, but it had plenty of speed and drive, and once you had the speed established it was really responsive. For a bigger guy’s small-wave board it’d be perfect.

Prime Boards, Peter.

PH: (03) 9558 0008

WEB: www.primeboards.com.au

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Graham deGoldi
Melbourne, VIC

Graham's call: “This is something we’ve developed over the past 12-18 months. Materials-wise it’s probably similar to what some others are doing, but we didn’t want to sell a water-absorbent core so we made sure we had the right kind of blank first. As far as the shape goes, we work a lot with our customers to find out what they need and we’ve wanted to move away from offering generic boards – we looked at a lot of the PU product and wanted to develop something with concaves that would be a step up for younger surfers. We’re also trying to be selective with what boards we make with this technology. We know it’s really strong and we thought we'd send it on the Board Test to Bali we’d see how it travels when it comes to surviving baggage handling."