05/06/2022
BEFORE INFLATABLE SUP BOARDS APPEARED ON THE MARKET, DROP STITCH TECHNOLOGY WAS A LONG WAY FROM PERFECTED. MISTRAL HAS ASSISTED ITS DEVELOPMENT.
We have Good Year Tyres in the USA to thank for the creation of drop stitch PVC used for making inflatable paddle boards. With the backing of the US Military, the idea was to create structures such as inflatable bridges and even an inflatable plane. That was back in the 1950s and while progress developed the material, the application never made it past the drawing board.
Consisting of a 'knitted' polyester weave; threads connecting upper and lower walls created a robust air filled structure. It was not until SUP appeared that the technology was to advance. In 2008, C4 came out with one of the first inflatable SUP boards, coining the term iSUP and revolutionizing the industry. The ability to roll up your board and travel globally opened the market to the world.
The drop stitch used relied upon multiple, separate layers of PVC laminated together, making the boards heavy and overly robust, the seams being the weak link. In 2014, Mistral were the first to use super lightweight, laminated woven PVC drop stitch fabric, manufactured in Germany for an exclusive range of super-light boards. In 2016 Mistral was voted the Best Inflatable in the USA using this fabric.
Woven drop stitch, we knew to be superior over that of a knitted, weave construction. The down side was cost and that the criss-cross pattern, often resulted in twisting of the boards, though longitudinal stiffness was far superior, as was the weight. Not long thereafter, Asian factories introduced what would be named by Red Paddle as MSL (Monocoque Structural Laminate) some time in 2016. In 2017 Mistral adopted the material, naming it FLT (Fusion Layer Technology). Both MSL and FLT still relied upon knitted technology and few layers of PVC.
The upside of a woven fabric, is that its tensile strength is substantially more than that of knitted material of the same thickness. This means, it’s possible to manufacture a lighter board of equal dimensions and achieve a significant weight saving together with a more rigid board. In 2019 Mistral, sourced a fabric which combined the benefits of a woven fabric and the advantages of FLT (Fusion Layer Technology).
In 2021, advances in stitching saw us introduce DSFL (Double Skin Fusion Layer) which boasts 2,600 threads more per inch totalling 13,600 for the same area. By using thinnner threads, but more of them, the net result is a 25% increase in longitudinal stiffness, without weight gain. Today this material remains the most advanced on the market. When you invest in a Mistral DSFL constructed board, you can be sure it's as good as it gets for an inflatable board.