I've been browsing these forums for awhile now, trying to learn as must as possible before attempting my first board. I've shaped (or tried to shape) a replica of Andrew Kidman's "DreamBoard." I spent maybe a month hand sanding the blank to just the right dimensions only to screw it all up with a catastrophic bottom lamination. I'm glassing a PU blank using polyester resin, and I accidently added about 3x the amount catalyst required. When I poured it on the blank it started kicking within about 90 seconds. Fortunately, I thought fast, razor bladed a few spots in the bottom channels and continued to work the resin in as best I could. The end result was a terrible free lap on the top and rails since I wasn't able to saturate the cloth along the rails properly.
After giving it some thought (and browsing these forums), I decided to sand the bottom, razor off the excess cloth from the rails and continue on with the top lamination. The top went much better than the bottom with the exception of a large air bubbles along the lap lines, tail, and nose. At the moment, I've sanded the bottom and I'm about to glass on the fins.
From what I can tell (having poured over various posts), there are two ways I could go from here: one, just hot coat over the bubbles and get on with it ("...air floats..." was the advice from one post), or two, drill/core small holes into the bubbles and try to fill them with resin prior to the hot coat. I'm leaning more towards the former since there are A LOT of air bubbles and delamination is a given already.
I'm not too worried about it ( and I've had a great time shaping the board since there hasn't been much swell this summer), but I don't to throw the board away. At this point, I just want to salvage as much of the board as possible. Any advice for fixing this is much appreciated.
I just finished sanding down the lap lines as best as I could, and I’m waiting to set the fins. Pictures are probably better than trying to explain how badly I screwed this up.
ouch!!! did similar on my first few voards. More due to using cheap and wrong materials though. each board looked so go after shaping then BAM destroyed in the lam process. I wish i still had those boards they surfed great. I would recomend putti.g some extra time into the board. in the pics the flats look good. if it was my board i would carefully sand out all the bubbles fill with a filler. 8 use microballoons and epoxy not sure what you use for PU resin. but fill it all in flush to existing glass and reglass 1layer top and bottom if need be. the board will be a we bit heavier but shouldnt de lam. those are my thoughts at least
Should I fill it with another resin like solarez? Or sand it down to the foam and fill with a spackle or something? There's also the end of the tail which is practically one large bubble. I plan on daming that up and filling with extra resin I have left over. What's the lightest cloth I can use for another lam?
yeah a spackle kind of filler. sorry im not to much help there but im guessing you can search fillers on the forum. i really like microballoons so i havent looked for any other kinds.
but the whole idea is to remove all the bubbles so the foam is exposed then make it all blend together
I would carefully sand/cut away all the fiberglass not bonded to the foam. Then I would treat the bare foam areas as ding repairs and repair with laminating resin and fiberglass. Sand and blend the whole thing and continue with the hot coat.
