hey all. took my new board out today and it got dinged. not just dinged, but there are three holes, one large enough for me to stick two fingers into.
i left the water right away and rinsed it well in a nearby river. i’ve always fixed my own dings, but these are bad and i want to get it done well.
the shop i use is closed for the next week, so i want to know what i should do to make sure the ding is clean in the mean time (rid of salt water). is this a good idea? will it matter? if so how do i best clean it?
Howzit nicolas, Flush the dings with fresh water and blow exceaa water out with compressor, do this about 3 times to make sure the salt water is out. If you have to wait then find some surf stickers or clear packaging tape to cover until you can fix, make sure the dings are dry. I did this in Mexico and I didn’t fix the dings til 6 months later and there was no problems. Aloha,Kokua
so am i right in thinking that the salt will harm the foam after the ding is dry?
my concern is that by flushing the dings with more water i may somehow weaken the foam further. but i suppose water just evaporates…
i’m disapointed. i asked the shop to glass it heavy, with 6 oz cloth on the bottom. the damage seems improportionate to the impact. how long does resin take to fully cure? it was finished over a month ago.
Salt water, left in the board, will definitely do more damage, delamination and so on, though so will fresh water.
Dried , shouldn’t be as much of a problem as that, but still- you’ve seen older boards with brown spots, especially those which seem to be glassed badly and have lots of pinhole leaks? I suspect the salts that get in and remain there, even when the water has evaporated, they kinda catalyse the UV-driven breakdown of the foam, from ‘white’ to ‘brown’, and the brown stuff is more fragile, chemical bonds broken and such, so it’s more likely to delam, etc.
I haven’t fomally played with the chemistry of it but a rough look at it,yeah, your worries about salt are justified. Flushing with fresh water, the cleaner the better, should have no effect - the basic foam chemistry is robust enough that it won’t dissolve under the polar effects of H2O. Acetone or another carbon based solvent would be another matter entirely.
Lets see- one more thing: the weight of the cloth in the board, say between 4 oz and 6 oz, that’s really not a lot of difference when it comes to resistance to small, point impacts like rocks and so on. How stiff the foam is, etc, that’ll make more of a difference down around those weights.
Howzit doc, What I've found out is that after flushing the ding with fresh water it will dry faster, about a day here in Hawaii. also if you leave the salt water in the ding, after it dries it leave saly crystals which will melt and cause delam if the area gets to hot from the sun,sanding or rubbing out. A few years ago I did some pinline work and glossing on a ding a friend fixed. We as I was rubbing out the gloss I saw the area delam, so I asked my friend if he flushed the ding with fresh water. He got a weird look on his face and said oh S#*t I forgot, really made me mad since the work I did was for nothing.Aloha,Kokua