How do I make a sculpture with foam core?

Does anybody know what kind of foam is used to make foam-core skimboards?

• Answer:

  Most likely it's the same foam that surfboards are made of - 60psi Spyder foam. "Spyder" is a legacy name (Like Kleenex) for a foam that Spyder Surfboards used to sell. It's 60psi foam in the vertical direction (which is the most important for long skinny things like surfboards). If your plan is to build your own skim board, I wouldn't bother getting Spyder foam because it's going to be pretty expensive and really hard to find. I would recommend searching for "Dow Hi-Load 60" foam. This has a compression strength of 60psi in all directions (x-y-z) and would work great for a skim board. It's still a little hard to find, but it's probably the best you're going to get. Finally, if you went to home depot and got regular old Dow 250 blue foam (25psi), and shaped your skimboard and glassed it, it would work fine too, you might just want to add a little more glass/carbon/kevlar for strength.