I have heard from several different people alot of ways to fix delam but I don’t know which one will actually work the best in the long run. The delam is on about 1ft. These are the 3 methods I was told to do by different people.
draw line around delam. Sand/grind away the glass on half the delam till you get to the last sheet of glass. Make a slice in that glass. Pour in resin, remove excess, weight it down with bags full of sand or books or something. After this sets. Add layer of fiberglass on top of sanded area as usual, let set. Hot coat, sand.
drill holes equally spaced apart down delam. Inject resin. remove excess, weigh down delam. glass holes and sand.
My issue with this method is the hole will only have one layer of glass unless I sand down the drill hole and cover wit two layers at end.
Strip all the old glass away and reglass.
This is a 6’4" from SF surf shop that is in good shape except except that delam where my knee goes where I duck dive. It happened a month after I got the board which sucks and its up to a foot long bubble 5-6" wide out from the stringer. I am pretty sure it happened because the board is airbrushed all red which caused the resin to not adhere as well as it could have to the foam.
#2 is the way to do it. drill small holes…1 layer of glass after filling the holes is nothing to worry about. 1 hole at each end of the delam should do it. it’s far more important to have it weighed down well over the hole repair after the gap has been filled with resin. also, a little tape around the holes you drill makes for easy cleanup (as this is where the excess resin will be squeezed out).
I have heard from several different people alot of ways to fix delam but I don’t know which one will actually work the best in the long run. The delam is on about 1ft. These are the 3 methods I was told to do by different people.
draw line around delam. Sand/grind away the glass on half the delam till you get to the last sheet of glass. Make a slice in that glass. Pour in resin, remove excess, weight it down with bags full of sand or books or something. After this sets. Add layer of fiberglass on top of sanded area as usual, let set. Hot coat, sand.
drill holes equally spaced apart down delam. Inject resin. remove excess, weigh down delam. glass holes and sand.
My issue with this method is the hole will only have one layer of glass unless I sand down the drill hole and cover wit two layers at end.
Strip all the old glass away and reglass.
Ok, in order - I use a variant on 1; sand the area well to thin out the old cloth, great place for a good sized ( 8" ) sander with a coarse disc, say 60 grit. Slit along one edge of the delam, wedge it open with a popsicle stick, pour in a lightly catalysed and wet resin/cabosil mix ( clear/white microballoons are better and lighter, of course) , tap on it while filling to get the bubbles out and then remove the popsicle stick. Immediately slap some wax paper over it to keep air from getting back in ( the slopped resin/cabosil will act as a gasket) , weight it down with something like a bit of formica or something flexy-but stiff like that which will keep it in the same curve as the rest of the deck. Otherwise, just weights will give you something uneven enough to cause seasickness. For Gutenberg’s sake, don’t use books for weights, ok? Bricks or something like that, lead diving weights are ideal, on top of the formica, but not books. When it’s gelled some, pull the weights, formica and wax paper off gently. Remove gelled resin on top of the sanded cloth, reglass the area in a nice big ‘deck patch’ pattern. As this board is redder than red already, some red tint in the cloth will pretty it up some, squeegee appropriately for a nice even layer of color. Hotcoat and gloss as needed. 2: never had any luck with that one. You have all these damned little holes that look like hell, usually lots of air bubbles in there where the stuff didn’t quite penetrate and a general mess where resin oozes out, plus other problems like the resin going off before you get it all done… I’ve tried variants with vaccums drawing resin in, you name it, and it tends to be lumpy, bubbles, etc. You wind up grinding away the cloth to fill 'em in with cabosil mix. Don’t bother with this one, especially for a big delam. 3: bleeping expletive deleted nightmare. 'Cos you gotta fill it all with a resin/cabosil mix and do as nice a job as a pro-plasterer to get it so it doesn’t need lots of sanding, just to get even wth the cloth and foam that came away when you ripped the cloth out, plus a mediocre at best bond from new-old. Plus you always have this one little spot that’s too low… don’t even consider it. A general surfboard repair maxim, applicable to this and just about any other repair - don’t cut out anything that isn’t really flapping in the breeze. The nightmare repairs I have had to do because Some Idiot got chop happy with their saw or router …well, lets not think about it, my blood pressure is bad enough as is. It almost always works better if you don’t cut out anything. On delams in general…look, no repair works real well in the long run. four-five years, you’ll have another one. Unless you add cloth over the whole area that can get stepped on and keep it out of the sun when it’s not in the water, which is a good idea anyhow. Best cure is to order your next board glassed heavier. and on that note, I need my beauty sleep. Not that any less than a few decades will really help. hope that’s of use doc…
I’ve used a similar approch but in addition I use a syringe without the needle. Instead I hotglue a drinking straw to it. The straw is amasingly flexible and can squeeze into even the smallest slit where I can’t even get a popsicle in to wedge it open. Even if the staw is pushed flat you can still push the resin through it. I just stick it as far into the delam as I can then sort off fill the delam from the bottom up if you know what I mean.
Yeah, I know just what you mean, if the source is way down at the bottom of the cavity then it tends to push air ahead of it rather than sit on top of it. The slit shows less than the many little holes, especially if you cut at an angle, not perpendicular to the surface of the deck.
I have also ( now and then) thinned the resin/cabosil mix with acetone for better penetration into those corners. Plus ‘massaging’ the area so that it’ll get in as completely as possible.