Leaderfins ‘carbon’ blades

Lubomir Stefanoff — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:45:00 +0000

I haven’t written for a while in my blog – everything is fine, I’m training and diving.
Some time ago a friend of mine broke his stereo fins – Leaderfins Carbon blades with Omer footpockets. It’s definitely not a pleasant experience to break a 260 EUR fins, but it was completely his fault and he admitted it.
The interesting thing is what he found out after he broke the fin:
As you can see, white layers of material (definitely fiberglass) significantly outnumber the black layers (carbon). It turned out that the ‘Carbon blades’ are not made from carbon, but from another, less expensive and lower quality material. It’s ironic, cause my friend had used those fins for two years considering them to be made from carbon…
Here is the description of these fins on Leaderfins’ website:
‘Carbon stereoblades with the angle in front of the blade.
The blades are available in 4 standard levels of stiffness, however we can add more stiffness upon request
The blades measurements are 20cm x 75 cm, but we can customize the dimensions according to your special request.
You can choose different kind of design for the end of the blade.
All our blades come with a one-year full warranty for materials and craftsmanship.’
I don’t see any hint pointing to the fact that they are putting more fiberglass than carbon in their ‘carbon’ blades!
Can we rely at the product’s description on the manufacturer’s website? Or we’d better break our fins to find out the truth about the materials used?
We have to do a thorough research on consumer opinion before we buy any ‘carbon blades’, especially if they are made by Leaderfins…
I got to go to the pool for my dynamic apnea session. Feel free to spread the word about the Leaderfins crap. Maybe they’ll learn a good lesson.

Lubomir Stefanoff | freediving and UW photography » carbon fins

Leaderfins ‘carbon’ blades