Hopefully the thread title will catch Brian’s attention. So I shaped myself a sweet little fish from a Clark blank and glassed it using Greenlight’s bamboo/epoxy method. When I pulled my board out of the bag a few weeks ago BAM! there’s a big ass round ding on the deck through that goes through the epoxy and deep crack in the deck as well. I’m not gonna speculate what happened but it undoubtedly involves at least one of my kids or their friends (the round ding looks suspicuously about the size of a golf club head). The question is “how do I repair it?” If it was a standard fiberglass and poly job it would be pretty straight forward. I was thinking of feathering the edges of the dings, filling any voids with epoxy, sanding after it cures and then putting a fiberlgass patch over it.
Post a photo and I can better advise you. In the meantime, use that golf club on the kids.
Did you save any of the scraps from when you cut the cloth? Greenlight could send you some? Just repair it like a normal ding but use the bamboo cloth scraps instead of regular glass. Maybe mix some microballoons with epoxy for filler?
Dude,
Here is the quickest and easiest way to do a repair of that nature(IMHO…cuz there’s a lot of guys on here way better than me)
First off …do you have any of the scrap fabric left? If so you will use that. If not let me know I have a ton of scrap.
If you have a dremel, cut a score line around the perimeter of the ding. Cut deep but try not to go all the way through.
Reason being, you want to cut the rest of the way though with a razor blade. It will give you better control and less risk of doing further damage to the foam. Keep the cut out pieces. You will use them later.
Next, mix micro balloons and enough UV cure epoxy to fill the void. UV because it cures faster and will give you more control. the stuff in the tubes at your local surf shop is fine for a small fill like this. Mix just enough of the balloons to cloud up the mix so it will blend into the foam.
Take it out into the sun for 20min or so to cure.(or whatever the mfgr recommends) then sand smooth. Try to sand it smooth till its below the bottom layer of the existing glass.
Lay out the cut pieces off to the side relative to the hole. Now there are two ways you can go about this part. Resin or something like Super77. I have only done it with resin to this point, but I dont see why a good clear adhesive wouldn’t work.
I think you can figure out the next part…adhere the pieces to the existing work and use a weight if necessary to keep it from bowing. I do it this way for a couple of reasons, but one is because you are using the existing cured glass instead of having to do multiple layers of new glass. Another is because it will minimize color variations( I have used this technique on restorations)
After this has cured, take your bamboo and do a “mini” stretch glass over the entire site extending out about 1".
Cut, feather, mini hot coat and sand smooth.
If you used wax paper and a plastic bag full of water for the “weighted” part you could probably pull the whole thing off with the UV cure stuff
Hope this help
Mahalo
Hey Kim_dude,
Did you glass a golf tee on your deck for a floating driving range? 
Repair is simple, just like a standard fiberglass repair.
Fill crack with microballons or similar thickener, stretch a piece of bamboo over ding and hold on all 4 sides with masking or duct tape, saturate and let cure. Remove tape and fair patch in with 80 grit, the unsaturated bamboo will be cut off by sanding motion. Hotcoat and sand… done.
Or, you could use fiberglass as well, it’s compatable with the bamboo. No bonding issues.
Let me know if you need any bamboo if you didn’t save any scraps.
~Brian
Thanks for the help. I’ve got plenty of bamboo scrap but have no more RR. If I buy a Ding-all epoxy repair kit will I have problems with bonding?
Aloha Kim Dude - I have found that the bamboo can not withstand real surf. I have made 6 boards with it and epoxy and they all did what you are describing or worse - they just fell apart. Huge latteral cracks - one retro fish even snapped off a swallow tail. All the problems start at overhead size waves. You really start loading up the stress and the bamboo has no strength. I cracked one in half doing a bottom turn. Some had bio-foam blanks (crap) so I switched and used marko with only the bamboo on the bottom and two layers of 6oz on the top. This is way stronger but bottom collapsed and stringer rose up - then board snapped clean in half. Every customer that got one had holes appear magically and it eventually broke. Hence I don’t use bamboo anymore and the last 10 boards or so have had no problems at all. It seems it has to be combined with regular fabric to achieve strenghts that surfboards commonly have and need. Once you have to use both bamboo and regular fiberglass on the same board the weight comes in to play and you’ve made a tank and the green theory goes out the window. Just some honest feedback. If you want can see my boards at www.uppglass.com/Diabolik.html I’m just a beginner but I did try my hardest to make the green board work. But if you can surf bamboo and bio-foams or clarks for that matter will not work for you. You will destroy them day one.