OK Mates,
I’ve got a 9’0" polyeurathane / polyester board that I want to bring back to life for a surf buddy. It’s buckleed badly at the front end of Bayne box all the way across the bottom of the board and around the rails. The top glass is still in tack.
What’s the best approach?
News Break: Peter Mel is on my fins at the Cold Water Classic!! Oh Yeah!
Mahalo – Back to work, Rich
I’m guessing your saying the buckle is in front of your fin box. If the board is actually broke through the stringer and the top layer of glass is holding its form then, make a milled fiberglass/resin mix and fill the voided area of the crack then put wax paper across the crack tape on sided i would then flip the board over on the deck and add to 10-20 lbs weights to compress the stringer back together. After this cures sand real well around buckle and i would sand through till about hitting cloth around the buckle. go for around 2" around all sides of the buckle. After you have finished sanding reglass with either double 4oz cloth or 6. the on layer of either on the bottom. Hot coat fin sand -your done! Theres a ton of ways to fix. Some guy dont like to fix them to strong because the board will tend to snap either ahead or behind the repair area given the right situations, if repaired weak it tends to break in the same spot. My thoughts are if you have broke your board putting it back together is a last ditch effort make it strong if i breaks again in a different area, time to trash it!
Without seeing it firsthand,I can only guess,but my guess is to cut/break it off into two pieces and glue it back up with dowels,either wood or fiberglass. To do it in other ways would be more work,and/or weaker.
How’s it going for you teach ? Haven’t heard from you in awhile ,Just wanted to say Hi !
Howzit Herb, There is another way to do it with out breaking the tail off and resetting it. What I learned about buckles is that most of the time the foam actually cracks all the way through the foam. What I do is use one of those bamboo bbq skewers and use the pointed end first to make a trench where the crack is , then use the other end of the skewer to widen and deepen the the crack till you get to the deckside. then I use lam resin with just a little cabo sil ( you wnat it runny) or Q-sel and fill the trench before glassing. This will make it as strong as if you broke off the tail to repair. Try it it works great.Aloha,Kokua
I did one, similar, that was busted in half right there. A …what was it, now, a Becker 9-something. When I was done, the owner liked it better than he did when it was new, so maybe I might have an idea or two that’d work.
A few tricks -
I wouldn’t put in dowels or ‘reinforcements’ . Getting the alignment of the pieces right , when you’ve put those things in, well, it requires skills far beyond mine, plus luck to make sure you don’t have a really messed up rocker. Instead, the strength is in the cloth. Use plenty of cloth.
As Kokua mentions, the foam is usually a problem. Also the glass in the buckled side. Both can cause you problems when you’re trying to get the rocker right. I’d cut away the buckled glass neatly and then put some weights on the thing, so that it’d get back to it’s original rocker. This may take a while, as I’d advise against heavy weights - it might let go all of a sudden. It’s right at the fin box and I am assuming you don’t have any Really Wide Stringers, or else Neira’s Excellent Method would be the way to go. With his method, tightly fitted strips of wood act as an alignment jig, not as reinforcement, so that you can thump the rocker to true and get on with it. You could probably do something similar, using the fin box sides and a flooring saw, but you don’t need to.
Okay, you have a cutout area of cloth. Carefully inlay a piece of 10 oz cloth in there. Why 10 oz? Well, when the old glass came away, it took some foam with it, call it 1/16" or so. To make up the thickness, you gotta use something thicker than was there and heavier glass is ( in my far from humble opinion ) the way to go. It’s also the time to try a color match, if you’re gonna go with one. The airbrushed color, if any, went with the cloth and that thin layer of foam. Or, if it was in the laminate, it went with the cloth. In any event, here’s your chance to do it really right.
You have an extra problem, though. The fin box was involved, and chances are the glass you had to remove laps past it. So, tape the finbox carefully, with good masking tape, and when your inlay has gelled, cut around it.
Ok, now for a couple of bands of glass. Narrow one first, wider one second. Feather the edges of that first layer to make the final sanding and fairing easier. And, yes, tape the fin box again, cut when it gels, retape. You use two bands of cloth of different widths so that ya don’t have a hard transition on the board, 'cos sure as shooting it’ll break again, right there. It’d be like putting a piece of iron pipe in the middle of a fly rod - the pipe won’t break, but the rest of the rod will break where it meets up with that pipe. So, space 'em out a bit, for a soft transition.
Hotcoat, gloss, sand as need be and polish and you’re done…except…
If this is a relatively modern shape, then it doesn’t have those horrible old-school round tail rails, and that extra cloth has done horrible things to 'em. Added a bunch of radius, so hard rails are now soft rails. You could try sanding it to the original shape, but ya wind up sanding away too much cloth. Which means eventually you wind up doing this all over again. So, bead the rails. Tape along the bottom, and let it run outside the outline shape a bit. Brush some resin on there, then when that’s hardened you can sand that to the good rail shape.
Now, I know I am going through this kinda fast. And the way I am using the terminology may not be exactly like everybody else does. Fair enough - mebbe this doodle will help -
hope that’s of use
doc…
Nice tip K,
Does it stand the test of time?
Rich, cool thing about your fins and Peter. And almost as good, I am on your fins in Cocoa Beach!!! Yes!!!
Howzit Herb, Every one I've done like this has stood the test of time and are still going.Aloha,Kokua
Thanks !!!
Kokuas method is a good one. Almost exactly how I do them. Never had one returned. The biggest mistake people make is in the prep. If you only go 2 inches past either side of the buckle as Josh Mosh mentioned it’s pretty much a no brainer that it’s going to break again on either side of the repair. When you go to feather that in you’ll lose an inch or so then you only have one inch overlap. also you have to hammer that edge a bit to get it to feather, and unless your real good with a sanding machine you may even weaken this area. The last thing you want is a weak area right next to your repaired area. Guaranteed to break again, especially if it’s right next to the edge of the Bahne box which is a weak area to begin with unless you capped the box when you built the board. Makes no sense whatsoever sorry Josh. I use 50 grit for old yellowed longboards and prep the area removing ALL the hotcoat up to 12 inches on either side of the buckle. Open the crevace up as Kokua mentioned by using a razor blade to remove all seperated glass back until you see the lam still attached to the foam(however far back that may be), then while having someone flex the tail downwards with the bottom up to open up the crack(takes 2 people) squeeze your runny cabosil thoroughly down into the void. Flexing the tail back and forth a few times helps get all the little pockets wetted with the cabosil. Now set the rocker and let harden. Clean it up with some 60 grit on the sander to get everything nice and flat for your lam process. Since you’ve dug a low spot into the prepped area with your 50 or 60 grit, you can now wrap a 6 ounce strip about 24 inches wide minimum (that should feather in nicely without too much of a bump left) all the way around the board, or at least around the bottom and rails up to just past the lap line on the deck if the deck is still solid. I usually do a 6 ounce then a 4ounce on top of that. Since it’s a not a new board and probably not quite as flat as it could be, this 4 ounce layer will most likley get stripped off in the sanding process, but it gives you something to work with. If you just use one layer you may break through that unless you’ve applied it perfectly, and you’ll end up starting all over with your lam process. You can then apply a thin glosscoat extending a few inches past your feathered in lamination which flattens everthing out a bit more.
Here’s how I installed the glass over my break. To prep the area I sanded through the hot coat 'till I could just barely see the weave.
My hope is that the tapered edge will reduce stress concentration in the flex pattern so I’m less likely to get another break at the edge of the new glass. The extra length allows me to carefully feather it in without losing too much of the bond area. Plus I reached out a little further to reinforce the front of the fin box which had a few small cracks. I went with single 6 oz., hot and gloss because the bottom was single 6 oz to begin with.
I’m a little sketched about it but I’ve had it out about 15 times. Still holding. Still crossing my fingers.
Look Ma’, no bumps
Hope that’s of some use.
Excellant job Ryan! I’d be proud of that if I were you. Tapering the glass is a good load disperser. Sends the shockwaves into the middle of the board to the stringer and the thickest part of the board. Sweet!
Thanks Lok,
I’m just cruizin’ Sway’s, soaking in all the good stuff I can, and trying to apply it.
Peace.
I’ve held Ryan’s board. The repair is boardlady.com quality. All you can see is a bit of a change in the yellow. I think its probably way stronger than it was to begin with.
Woa! Hey! Lets’ not get crazy. If it were boardlady quality you wouldn’t have been able to tell it was ever broken. God knows I tried to match that darn yellow. Too many hours. That’s where my icon came from.
Thanks Benny.