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doc - thanks for the props on the business. I'm trying hard to get up and running at full capicity. Has been hard with working a stressful day job and then finding time to work on boards. I'm wipped out by the time I get home, but I love working on boards and providing them to people. Especially the kids. It's awesome watching them get so stoked paddling out on a "new" board!
WS
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De nada, man. Keep up the good work.
Now, having been in pretty much the same situation, doing dings and etc after a blue collar kind of day, I might have a coupla suggestions that'd help. And please don't take any offense at anything I suggest that's blindingly obvious to you and that you've been doing for years, as ...wayull, everybody's different, y'know? Came up in the trades different, and worked for people with different priorities.
And I was in the ding business for a while, including keeping a rental board fleet in commission. So, I kinda feel your pain, y'know? Too much to do and too little time to do it in, when what I really wanted was several cold beers and a soft chair.
Oh, and anybody else that's reading this and wants to start doing dings for fun and profit, here's some tips and tricks.
First off, build a bunch of quick-and-dirty ding stands out of 2x scrap and other scrap. With a few bungees or straps so they can function as sanding stands too. The idea is that then you can do mass production rather than one-at-a-time, so you get the most results out of what time you're spending at it. Don't bother trying to make those Y-shaped stands that'll hold boards on edge or flat, make simple ones that will do one or the other.
Resin- I used to do up a good sized batch of clear resin, catalysed slow, real slow. I'd have things set up so that I'd have a bunch of dings on a bunch of boards ready to go, masked off and cloth taped on as need be. Have at it, using the resin as gloss on what needed glossing, hotcoat on what needed hotcoats, then for laminating cloth, then mix in filler and do that. All from one batch. Use a 1" bristle chip brush for the laminating in addition to the hotcoating and glossing, it's quick for smaller jobs, faster than a squeegee and you don't have to clean it afterwards. And this way, you use less resin and spend less time mixing and so on.
Sanding - again, you want to line things up so you fire up your sander and just head down the line. I'd have a couple of sanders, a 5" Porter Cable random orbit (the 5" version of this one: http://www.deltaportercable.com/Products/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductID=11081) and a big Milwaukee sander-grinder ( this beauty here: http://www.milwaukeetool.com/ProductDetail.aspx?ProductId=6078&CategoryName=SC%3a++7+and+9+in.+Sanders ), both variable speed. Maybe 100 grit on the random orbit, 80 or so on the big 'un with a soft backing pad.
Once you've spent some time with the big sander, you can do surprisingly small and finicky work with it. And it's fast and it does a good job. And when you've done with the sanding, a quick whack with wet sandpaper ( and a squeeze bottle of water in your other hand) gets it ready for polishing, which the big Milwaukee sander does very well too. I found that if you're gonna polish at all, use a fairly aggressive polishing compound or else you'll be there all night.
If, by some chance, you have a big compressor, you might want to play with smallish air sanders and wet sandpaper. I experimented some, it worked, but not really well enough to justify it on the scale I was doing it at. I found that hand sanding with wet sandpaper worked as well and was at least as fast. I wouldn't wet sand any finer than 400 grit, and coarser (200-something) will do okay, especially if you hit it with aggressive polish after.
Forget sanding blocks. You'll do a better job by hand alone.
Color - I basically gave up on trying to match colors. Takes a lot of time and it never comes out right. Instead, almost all color these days is airbrushed onto the foam, so it'll be on that foam that sticks to the busted glass in a ding. So you save as much of that as you can and fill behind it and glass over with clear resin. The small 'cracks' of filler that'll be visible are, to my mind, more acceptable than a patch of color that doesn't match. Oh, an X-Acto knife, looks like a scalpel, those are really good for doing that kind of work. It's kinda finicky stuff, but in the long run it's faster than trying to match colors and so on.
If it's a little convex after filling, that's fine, the cloth you put over it will make up for that.
Filler: Cabosil and resin is fine, mask/cofferdam/mold it well to minimise sanding after. Mixing foam bits and using resin to stick it in is a nightmare. You have something pretty hard next to something quite soft, so while sanding the hard stuff you wind up taking gouges out of the foam or making dips and ya gotta fill those with cabosil/resin mix and the whole mess starts over again.
I got out of production ding work before the white Gorilla Glue came out, but I'd suggest playing with it some, as it goes off to a nice white foam that'll replace crunched foam. It sands very easy, it expands to fill little crevices and such,, it's good stuff. The foam it makes might be a little softer than the original foam- so what, you're gonna be glassing over it with more glass anyhow.
You see some people dealing with dings by taking a saw, cutting out a wedge of rail and then trying to put in a wedge of foam and shaping that, then glassing it and so on. Don't do it, or the similar routing out great chunks of foam that got dinged. It makes for a lot of work and it never comes out well, Likewise cutting away big pieces of glass or similar, try to keep as much as you can.
Delams - big ones, shine 'em on and don't take the job unless you're doing it for a customer with deep pockets. It's a long and difficult job, the foam under it is almost always compromised/screwed up somehow and things just go sour on you. Smaller ones, a wet cabosil mix behind the loose glas, worked in well into the edges and then clamped down somehow( try using scrap Formica sheet and web straps like a lightly applied strap clamp), that's as good as it gets. Glass heavy over 'em .
Some useful tools to have:
Plastic putty knives - great for scraping off the wax and crud.
Rags - you can never have enough of 'em.
Popsicle sticks and tongue depressors - buy them as craft supplies, they're cheap.
1" chip brushes - I used to buy boxes of them from Harbor Freight, very cheap that way and you're not tempted to do something silly like using a bucks worth of acetone to clean a thirty cent brush. http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=4181
X-acto knife - http://www.xacto.com/Product/x3601 - works better and does more than razor blades. Touch up the blades with fine wet sandpaper and a flat surface rather than gumming up your good sharpening stone. Try to keep wet resin off it. The sharp point is very useful.
Tape- I used cheap masking tape, Ace Hardware store brand. The real good blue stuff is too pricy. http://www.staples.com/Scotch-Tape-Dispenser-3-Core-Putty/product_129825?cmArea=SEARCH ( look for one used) is handy for some uses.
Good scissors.
If you're working inside, a small shop vac with an 'uphostery brush' attachment is good, otherwise just brush off the dust onto the lawn.
Lots of wax paper cups. Office supply places are good for those, or supermarkets.
Cheap Vinyl gloves. Saves a lot of time cleaning up later and you don't have to resist the temptation to dab down that %$#@ sticking-up corner of cloth with a fingertip.
Wax paper and food wrap. The wax paper is good for some molding tricks, if it doesn't get folded, and some types of plastic wrap make a very nice quick mold around rail dings and such. But some kinds of plastic wrap are styrene-soluble, so that they turn to ugly glop when they contact resin.
'Mustard pumps', like you see sold with epoxies, are nice and quick for getting 'standard amounts' of resin out of gallon cans without a lot of mess and fussing. Though they'll eventually gum up and you'll need to replace 'em, they're fairly cheap if you shop around. Trick: push down until you feel resistance on that first pump, then a fingertip over the nozzle. let it come up and you get a 'full pump' of resin so you don't try to guess 'was that 4 1/2 pumps or just 4-and-a-little?'.
Likewise small syringes, the all-plastic ones, for catalyst. Takes the guesswork out of it, 'cos I always lost count of the drops.
The one thing I did try to more or less color match was sun-browned foam on older boards. The trick there is use a little instant coffee dissolved in acetone as a tint.
And I've blathered on at length, too long, probably....
hope that's of use
doc....
