For the last few months, the brains over at Firewire Surfboards have been working with Rob Machado on a little something called the Volcanic Project. Catchy name, right? Well, it’s more than just clickbait — it’s a whole new material for glassing a surfboard, and it uses volcanic rock in it. Rob Machado recently got a Seaside built with it, and he is excited, to say the least.

“Volcanic Tech is made from basalt fibers extruded from volcanic rocks that are crushed, melted and extruded into woven fibers that make up the cloth,” the team at Firewire wrote. “The manufacture of basalt fiber requires the melting of the crushed and washed basalt rock at about 1,500 °C (2,730 °F). The molten rock is then extruded through small nozzles to produce continuous filaments of basalt fiber. Those filaments are then chopped into long stem fibers and woven into lamination cloth fiber. The cloth has similar characteristics to carbon as it relates to strength and weight, however, because the fibers are derived from organic raw materials. When combined with bio resins it serves as better degradable ECO alternative than using traditional carbon fiber cloth.” Chopped Glass Fiber

In terms of weight, flex, and response, carbon and volcanic lamination are pretty similar. Good for the Earth and how great does it look?!

Only the best. We promise.

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