It’s a 10’ multi-stringered blasa board with glass on wood fin that was glassed with poly and appears it was not properly sealed adequately to begin with and therefore has many places where the glass has delamed from the board. Has anyone out there had experience in removing all the glass from a balsa board. Not sure whether the wood is apt to tear out when peeling off the glass as much as foam, perhaps more so? My thought was to set a 1/8" carbide straight bit in the routher and run several passes full length from nose to tail perhaps 3" or 4" apart, then peel off the long strips by sliding a putty knife or similar under as it is peeled off. Rails might be more tricky? Thanks for any better thoughts / ideas or confirmations based on experience?
Richard
Richard, the glass does not like to be peeled off the rails, the curvature resists flexing and a lot of grain tear out is the result. I would say to sand the center of the rail until you are just breaking through the glass and use your heat gun to soften any problematic area, I watched Pat Curren strip several balsa guns that oiled or moisterized out in the glassing, slow and steady
Richard, glass does not like to be peeled off the rails, the curvature of the glass resists flexing and can peel a lot of wood grain up with it. Sand the center line of the rail until you break through the glass slightly and then use a heat gun to soften any problematic areas.
I sealer coat the wood blank until there are no signs of any dry looking spots, I put 5 coats on a redwood blank for Channel Islands before it was safe to glass, it has not shown any signs of delam yet