For most of the last 50 years, the primary sheep herder was Gordon “Grubby” Clark, who along with Hobie Alter pioneered the switch from wood to mass-produced, lightweight foam surfboards.

Clark Foam began operating in the mid-1960s, and by the time Gordon “Grubby” Clark shut his factory in Laguna Niguel on Dec. 5, 2005 — surfing’s Black Monday — his polyurethane blanks ...

Clark and fellow surf technology innovator Hobie Alter developed the polyurethane board in the 1950s, when they slathered resin over a foam blank. The process made possible the mass production of ...

It is a water-blown, closed-cell, rigid polyurethane foam that features formulations as low as 2 lbs.-per-cubic foot density. But beyond its use as a structural material, the foam likely has other ...

Gordon "Grubby" Clark of Clark Foam supplied an estimated 90 percent of the polyurethane foam used to make surfboards around the world. Gloria Hillard reports on the shock wave that Clark's ...

Polyurethane foam looks like it’s made of small, almost sand-sized granules. Though EPS cell structure does come in a variety of sizes, the most common used for surfboards has a cell size of ...

At the neon-pink-walled factory of Soul Stix Surfboards, in the surf ghetto of San Clemente, Calif., a computer-controlled circular saw shapes a 5-foot-9-inch board from a slab of polyurethane foam.

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif., have developed a low-density, energy-absorbing foam that could help save the nation's $200 million surfboard industry. TufFoam was ...

Hobart Alter, whose development of the foam surfboard and the "Hobie Cat" sailboat brought masses to the water, has died. He was 80. Download the FREE NBC LA app A statement on the Hobie sporting ...

Polyurethane foam surfboard pioneer Dave Sweet died of acute renal failure May 18 in Los Angeles at the age of 86. PU development started in the 1930s, gained visibility during World War II as a ...