pavedwave longboarding

skatersjourney · Joined: 10 Sep 2008 Posts: 40 Location: Plymouth, UK

Awesome to see the Illuminati held in such high regard.

As my city thrashin', trail trashin' see all do all board, I could not be prouder of how the Illuminati is turning out. Here in the UK we have quite a lot of buzz about the boards, which I take to events for people to try out. The next Ultraskate I do will be on the Illuminati in hybrid push-pump setup.

Keep enjoying the boards, keep trying new setups and keep riding!

Laura xxx

_________________
Laura | Proud Practitioner of Karmic Longboarding | http://www.happyskater.org

gboom · Joined: 29 May 2008 Posts: 56 Location: Vancouver WA

Hey Pavedwavers. We at GBomb have some news worth noting, but first a photo of two Illuminati decks. The one on the left is one of the final Illuminati stringer decks that we will be doing, it is headed for Sweden. The deck on the right is bound for Japan. It has an all Mahogany core.

So, here is the news. We are planning to transition to the all Mahogany core recipe for the Illuminati platforms. While we love the beauty of the stringers and we are very, very, happy with the performance of these decks for 225 lb and under riders (myself included). Eric and company even have a couple thousand miles on our test decks and they continue to add to the total. However, we are finding that the switch to the solid Mahogany cores gives an even more robust deck, and we can control the flex of these platforms b/c we are able to procure and plane the cores down to precise thicknesses in-house.

One quick disclaimer about the use of the word Mahogany. I am not claiming to be a wood expert. So if what I say here is off a bit, feel free to correct me. Mahogany gets used for many types of wood that are similar. So Mahogany is a family of woods with similar properties. These different Mahoganies come from all over the world. I won’t give away all the keys to the castle about what specific Mahogany we are using, but it falls in the family of Mahogany.

Richard is our 250lb aggressive rider and friend of Eric Lowell. Richard finally met his match with the Mahogany core proto that we gave him a few months back. Until this deck, he had relatively quickly destroyed EVERY flexing deck that he was aggressive on.

We have a couple reasons to explain the added robustness. The Mahogany core is a harder wood than the soft Aspen that it replaced in the stringer deck. It also provides more structure to compliment the glass and carbon fiber laminate. This structure allows us to go thinner with the cores. The thinner core minimizes delam stress at the interface. We are also finding that the surface of the Mahogany really likes the resin, and this provides an great interface for the composite. Look for us to transition fully to the Mahogany for the Illuminati.

_________________
Ride your skateboard, save gas, sleep well.