The following is an account of the process of restoring the WM “Tracker” that was featured in “They said it couldn’t be done” thread.
The board was in a bad way when I received it. To most people it would be rubbish, after all that is where it was found, on a garbage pile. An eight-inch section of the nose was missing and three inches of the tail was also missing. The original fin box was still in the board but somebody had crudely bonded a fin into the box with resin. The deck had a number of areas that had delaminated and it was covered in dents and dings.
The whole board needed to been ground to prepare for the ding repairs. Once ground, the nose and tail areas were prepared for the new foam. The old fin box was removed and the resulting hole was filled with foam. The nose and tail were reshaped and everything was glassed. As the board was going to have a full colour job all the dings needed to be glassed to stabilise the dinged areas. Then they could be filled with a 75/25 mix of Q-cell/ Aerosil. The next process was to sand and fair and a layer or 4oz applied over the filled areas. The rails were in such poor condition that after being faired two layers of 4oz was applied to the entire length or both rails.
The delaminated areas in the deck were removed and the areas reglassed, filled and faired. The section of glass with the shaper’s logo on it was cleaned up and reglassed into the board. The dents in the deck were filled with a wet mix of chopped glass and resin and two applications were necessary to fill all the dents. I had not tried this before and I will certainly use this method again as it worked well. It does add some weight, but as this board is going to be a wall hanger the added weight is not a major consideration.
Normally if there are a small amount of shallow dents to fill I’ll use straight resin. But because of the amount and the size of the dents and the amount of camber in the deck, something with a little more substance was needed. Q-cell / Aerosol was another option but I thought it would be a good opportunity to try the former method on this occasion.
A new fin had to be made. This was constructed from 10oz-boat cloth and surfboard-laminating resin was used. The template is from a “Hohensee” tracker that I own. This was glassed onto the board.
The board needed some filling and fairing on the new nose, tail and on the rails. Again the Q-cell/Aerosil mix was used. Then a layer of 4oz was applied over these repairs. The board was then hotcoated and sanded to 320.
The paint used on this board is thinners based acrylic paint. A high build primer was applied over the sanded hotcoat. This was left a few days to cure and any minor holes were filled, sanded and re-coated with primer. Then a light sand with 500 dry.
The bottom was painted first. One light coat was applied, left for ten minutes to tack off. Then three wet coats were applied allowing time to tack off between coats. The board was left for a week to cure. Then the deck colours were applied.
Same method as above,the white first then the middle. Again the board was left to cure. The board was sanded with 600 wet & dry and masked for the black pinlines. Once sprayed and cured the board was sanded with 1200 wet & dry and glossed. Acrylic Topcoat clear was used. Applied the same way as the colour coats. The fin was sprayed separately one side at a time with the board on its rail in the stands. Again the board was left to cure. Topcoat clear is very easy to get a gloss with. But it is very soft and easily burns when polishing. The board was sanded with 600, 1200 wet & dry then polished with “Farecla” G3 regular grade compound paste. Then finished with “Farecla” super fine polish. Using a lambswool-buffing pad.
The paint was thinned 1:1 and the TCC was thinned at 1.5:1 The gun used is an Oldfield’s 60T electric airless. It is pretty basic, but it did the job. Any orange peel or overspray dry spots easily sanded out.
This is the first major painted restoration that I have undertaken. I normally do full pigment restorations. There does seem to be a growth in the interest of the boards from the late 60’s into the 70’s and people are asking for painted restorations. As time goes on I will have to invest in some better equipment for spraying boards.
This board took a total of 32 hours over a 10-month period.
Platty.