First, I want to make sure everyone who reads this knows that to fix a delam, the whole “drill and fill” technique is crap. A band aide for a wound that cannot heal on its own. I can’t tell you how many Craigslist boards I’ve purchased with this technique having already been performed.
Second, there is no reason cabosil and resin should be the consistency of peanut butter, marshmallow fluff, honey, or any other food product. I’m pretty sick of taking off some glass and finding a hard, white rock surrounded by yellow foam and sand. Knock it off. The cabosil/resin mix can and should be mixed to the consistency and weight of the foam. Keep adding cabosil, even after you think you should stop, it will be fine, it will cure fine, it will stick just fine, it will sand sooooo easy, and it will not make a hard spot to break off later.
Ok, whew, on to the actual post.
Craigslist has been semi kind to me lately and I just got this 9’3" Anderson Farberow model (among many other treasures). Great board but the deck is totally delamed. So out comes the dremel and in goes a bit of elbow grease (not too much, actually)
with everything detached, it took very little effort to remove the deck skin and this is what I found
I took the skin off in one piece to be used later for a template. My plan is a simple luan inlay, a diamond in the middle and a fore and aft section (luan being only 8 feet, some creativity is in order).
the board is drying now so I’ll finish this in a bit. How long do people think I should let this air out (I have left it drying in the sun for two days so far and I bring it in at night)?
Drill and fill only works with smaller delams..like smaller than a baseball size delams. I've had great sucess with my vac pump and epoxy, on small delams, and pretty good success on larger ones.....depending on how long the guy rode the delamed board? if the glass just pops, then it's an easy fix. If it pops then the guys continues to ride and lets it get bigger and bigger, and the foam gets rougher and rougher...than it's a potential mess.
For the big delams like below I would have:
1a) Sanded the whole thing with80 grit down to a light layer of glass, not to the foam... but very thin
1) drill small hole at top and bottom of delam
2) mix epoxy and fill board with 1000 cc syringe and high volume needle (buy at flooring store, syringe needle is made for injecting epoxy into floors...they fill those squishy spots in poorly layed wood floors) inject epoxy with board standing up,..then tape over holes so nothing runs out. Move board to one side, then other side, then tail up..etc...let epoxy run around inside delam void for a while. "But let the epoxy run on the fiberglass side only...not the foam, not yet. remember you have about 20-30 mins with RR CE.
3) shove the board into your vac bag delam side down, put on racks delam side down....now pull it tight with 25mg, let cook for 6 hrs until golden brown.
4) take out of bag and admire or cures
3) reglass top with 6 oz poly and cut lap green tint job, and finish as usual. re-pinline in black.
I’ve usually sanded down the glass over the delam to a thin layer, cut a flap, flap it back, clean up the foam, lay in resin, flap it back down, weight it down heavily, let cure, then patch over the whole area, fair edges, hotcoat, sand. Your way seems better so you don’t have a big “scar” where you cut the flap. I’m assuming you can do the same thing without the vac bag?
Grrr! Drill and fill is like republican tax policies, you can explain it well but in reality, it doesn’t fix the problem.
anywho, I felt like an archeologist taking that deck off. The gentlemen from whom I bought the board had it for four years. He had the rails redone but the deck was too expensive for him. When I pulled the skin back, I could see at least 3 huge and crappy drill holes into the foam, surrounded by many tinier drill holes, all with different mixes of resin or cabosil mixtures, there was also a lot of shards of broken repairs embedded in the foam and in the various fill and drill attempts.
in your first paragraph, you say that the small drill and fill repair may pop. Well, it does and most likely always will. Then, like what my seller did, a person is encouraged to just keep drilling and filling in small batches until the cancer gets out of hand.
Thats the key word, its a cancer. You can’t wall up colon cancer in your but and pretend it won’t spread, you have to cut it out with surgery.
Please please please help put a stop to this technique. A delam needs to be cut out, no matter the size, and repaired properly. The drill and fill or the “sand, slit, flip” methods are 100 % half arsed and not proper repairs. At least if you want to not have to worry about the same problem again in a few months.
the conclusion to the mighty deck replacement project. It didn’t really take 5 weeks, I just didn’t feel like doing this till now.
I used luann from Home Depot that I planed down to just one ply thick (as opposed to three). Glued it in with Gorilla Glue. Set it on old couch cushions and piled weight onto it. The deck is flat, I’ve had problems making thicker woods adhere to complex curves, so I’ve lost volume and the weight of the wood (and 4 oz glass on top) reduced buoyancy. Definitely affects flat water paddling but the rides are really fun, really easy to side slip from the nose and its very stable for how narrow it is.
Next full deck repair will be with two part foam to let me keep the volume and weight about the same, but the board is great for what it is. Nothing too wrong with a 25 lb 9’3" noserider.
I don’t expect any more delams from this sucker now
the pictures are in reverse order and I have since polished the rails
