I took the deck off of a compand that I wasnt happy with, my first one, because it was too heavy and took on quite a bit of water. In the process of removing the deck skin it tore out quite a bit of the EPS and im not sure how to go about replacing this. It was done with home depot foam glued together in sheets so it looks pretty funny right now in the upper nose area and right between the feet.
Figure my options were to somehow replace all the foam, or find a way to put partial sheets back in… im sure pictures would help, will get some if anyone is interested
thanks in advance, this place is great
Here’s the most robust of the options for ya -
Hotwire the foam off by running the wire along the rails. Then glue a new sheet of EPS on and reshape. Clean up the skin and bag it back on.
Gorilla glue is a good one to glue the replacement foam on with.
This will give a board that should be like new when you’re finished.
Anything else usually gives a sub-standard repair, but if the foam tear-outs are minor or not in foot traffic areas you could maybe get away with simple gluing the skin back on, chunks and all!
Just realised you may not have access to a hotwire -
In that case, make your self a long flat sanding block, by gluing 60-grit onto a stick of timber.
Then just sand the deck down to level with the rails, by holding the block across the board so that it uses the rails as a gauge for the depth.
Add the foam back on under light vacuum to get a perfect bond.
Good luck!
Hey marley…
I wanted to add to kk’s quality response:-
Its likely that at some point your shaped deckline/foil exposes the sheet glueline. you will have great difficultly taking a hotwire through the foam if you try crossing your sheet join. The option of blocking down through a glueline is also iffy…IF, again, you need to go through glue. You will almost certainly get a hump where you hit the glue.
So sum up your options…It may be that the torn-out bits are not so radical as to require a full sheet replacement. In a couple of cases where I’ve done what you are contemplating, I have opted to fill the holes with a mix made of broken-up foam and resin. Very little resin, and the beads from an offcut all pulled apart. This makes the lightest possible filler.
(Don’t try to get this filler by powdering EPS with sandpaper or surform…the powder melts with the heat of the curing resin and you get a sunken fill.)
Pat the mix into your torn holes and level it back to the shape as best you can. Try to minimise the need to shape back the cured filler because you may take out some of the line you want to keep. You can press down high points in your filler while the resin is partially cured. Scuff the surface of the filler to ensure a good bond before bagging on a new skin.
Another trick is to use bagging to push the high points down with a stiff piece of panel when its still a bit soft. Use something which will still bend to the deckroll and bag it over your partially cured filler with a piece of plastic sheet between.
I have also bagged replacement sections of EPS into major holes…fair out the edges of your hole, making it a smoother transition for the filler piece. Tape around the rounded-out crater, cut a scrap to slightly oversize, bag it lightly, the bag pressure pushing the offcut to the curve of the crater, and shape back when cured. This requires care to avoid hitting the foam you want to keep…but the tape helps. High points in the glueline can be pressed flat when partially cured.
Josh
www.joshdowlingshape.com
Thanks for the help, both your posts were informative and now I realize I should probably just remove all the foam. The board has too thick of a bottom skin and FCS plugs, I would like to switch over to glass-ons so this would be a good opportunity.
It was originally glued up with sheets glued together so the missing parts are flat sheets with rough edges where the glue held some of the foam down.
So now rather than battle with glueing foam back in, it should be easier to knock off the bottom skin and just replace all the foam right?, reshape, rebag bottom skin with thinner wood, and throw on the glass ons
(fyi this board was done without a bag using water bottles so I ended up using much more resin than needed, another incentive to redo all skins since I have a bag setup now)
*edit, I cant seem to make up my mind, but I think im going to keep it on since its probably more work than its worth to remove it to save a few ounces. I will try the cut and tape method.