Oh dearie me. Yeah, that’s crunched. As you’ve discovered, that was really meant for flat water or tiny waves and the structure is made accordingly. Well, there’s a cliche about spilt milk that’s real appropriate, now we have to fix it.
First, yeah, you want to get the deck pad off, see what fresh hell lurks there. Then, to work.
So, set up a work table, with blocks and so on. Chances are the rocker got tweaked, you want to fix that before you do anything else, which will take some doing. I would put it bottom up, put a sort of fulcrum under it, weight the nose and tail to get the rocker as right as you can,block it and strap it in that position.
Now, as far as I can see, that has ridiculously light styrene foam in it, that’s common. And some of it got squashed when the board bent, you need to make that up. What I would do is get Gorilla Glue in there, it expands, it’s a urethane foam rather than a styrene but that shouldn’t be a problem, they’re compatible. If you have to, drill some small holes and inject it, but try to avoid having the holes in the proverbial ‘dotted line’.
Okay, now, sand it so it’s flat and so you can get a good bond with new cloth and resin… Carefully. If some glass comes away, so be it. If you discover more voids in the foam while you’re doing that, okay, more Gorilla Glue. Likewise, fill any low spots with glue rather than resin plus filler. Let it go off/expand some (wide masking tape over it, improves the density) and sand it all nice.
Now, you have some glassing to do. Quite a lot, actually. So get hold of these guys, they’re the Resin Research distributors for Australia. You’re going to need at least a liter or so of resin. Actually, see what it costs before you do anything, you may decide that you have a coffee table and leave it at that, epoxy is expensive.
AUSTRALIA
Burford Plastics
5 Stewart Rd,
Currumbin Waters
QLD 4223, Australia
Phone: +61 7 5534 3777
Right, no adventures in living room furniture? Okay, what I would do next is lay some cloth on the bottom, 6 or 8 ounce, call it a foot (300mm) wide, centered on the break and well lapped up onto the sides right to the edges of the ‘cockpit’ there. Laminate that, squeegee well for lightness, follow it with an 18" (500mm) band that overlaps evenly front and back also squeegeed well. You want a narrower band under the wider band so you don’t get any abrupt changes in strength and stiffness, those are an invitation for new breaks right at the transition.
Check the directions for ‘time between layers’ and such, follow that. Let that cure. This is so the thing isn’t flexy when you do the other side. Using a razor blade, make X cuts in the cloth where your drains are while the resin is still wet, use a throwaway brush or a stick or something to push the cloth into the drains as best you can, don’t worry if it’s not perfect.
Flip the board over, do the same thing across the top, cockpit floor, sides of the cockpit and around down to the bottom, don’t forget the X cuts in the drain holes and something similar in that whatsit lifting handle in the cockpit there. The overlap of top and bottom is your strength, resistance to buckling, like a box girder or channel iron. When that has cured, pretty it up in the drains and in the cockpit. A Dremel tool or similar is probably your friend there. Fill the weave with a hotcoat equivalent brushed/flowed on like you’d do varnish, let it cure well, sand smooth, paint white, call it a day.
At least, that’s how I’d go about it. And again, I wouldn’t blame you if you made it a table top. Quite a lot of work and cost involved and you might find another board is the way to go.
hope that’s of use
doc…