My apologies if this has been covered before…but…I did search the archives for nearly an hour before posting. Hoping to get some repair guidance. As the Dad of two lightweight shortboard shralpers here in Cocoa Beach I’m the designated ding repairman. My youngest (whose 6’2" and 200lbs) is just murder on surfboards. He surfs so backfoot heavy that he has a chronic problem with the foam compressing on either side of the stringer (in the deck on the tail) forming a stress riser on top of the stringer and eventually cracking through…even with a traction pad. I’ve tried to remedy this by throwing cloth and resin over it, up to 3 layers! But it still occurs. I’ve thought about routing out the stringer in the affected area to around a 1/4" depth, fill this groove by glueing in a piece of foam, sanding flat then apply the cloth, resin and sand as usual. The idea being that the foam strip will compress evenly with the adjacent foam instead of bearing hard against the edge corner of the stringer.
Has anybody had similar problems? What’s your remedy? Has anyone tried what I’ve described above?
get his boards made out of a higher density foam… or better yet an epoxy sandwitch…
your a dealing with a disposable product so fixing it is a problem. your idea sounds like a good temp solution but you might be making a weak point for as well… i bet fcs plugs cause you problems!!!
I’ve milled down plastic stringers and put eps foam over the milled area and re-glassed on epoxies. It works. Your problem seems to stem from your statement “lightweight.” As suggested, if they are epoxy, move to higher density foam or a sandwich starting with a glass schedule like 4/4/4 or trying patches in the high impact areas. Loehr is also a “stomper,” as I would notice boards that he rode, even for the first time, had hefty dents in the deck. I have patches on my deck where my feet go. Being over 200lbs is hard on boards, as I’m not a shralper.
I used to use the +/- 45 knitted double bias 9oz under the footstrap area of sailboards made with clark blanks. Adds some weight and is a little difficult to make “pretty”, but adds incredible crush resistance. More so than equal weights of normal cloth. Might be worth a shot.