Hi guys, got a good size gash in the bottom of my wooden Danny Hess board. I’m pretty good at fixing boards and have done it for years but this is a first for me with a Hess. My plan of attack is to basically lift up those pushed in wood tabs and fill the area underneath with epoxy and then lay a piece of glass over it. As you can tell from the photo under the wood is basically the same stuff stryofoam beer coolers are made of. This board took on some water and has been sitting to dry for a few months now. Its not dripping water anymore but if i stick my finger in there i still feel a slight bit of moisture. Worst part is the board weighs a ton now. It used to be a feather light 5’10 fish but now has the weight of a 10 foot log. You can see from the other pic some of the wood turned green from the water that was sitting in there. That stryofoam sucked up water like crazy. Anyways thats the story, i’m just reaching out to see if there is anything i can do to get some of the weight out of the thing before i glass it over? Thanks in advance!
Can’t do nothin’ until all the moisture is out, and it weighs what it did before. Park it in Bakersfield for a month? I don’t know how to get all the moisture out, but you can’t even think about repairing it until you do. Normally I would say contacting the builder or glasser is unnecessary, but in this case it might be a good idea to see what they say.
If you are near San Francisco I can help. What I do is make a hole in the other end of the board. Then I suck out the water with a bag and towel over the hole hooked up to a vacuum pump. The sail board guys used to drill holes in the ends and strap it on a ceiling fan and spin. Fix with epoxy like a normal ding. The Boardlady web site has some good tips too.
Good luck!
I couldn’t agree more - get your board completely dry before doing anything else. A vac system is the best, though some low-tech solutions can work (nose and tail holes driled, board left verticle until there is no doubt that all the moisture is out. Maybe rail to rail would do in your case. My compsand days taught me to be sure of the dryness issue! Creeping mold and delamination are the result otherwise.
And by the way, don’t try bleaching the wood with industrial strength hydrogen peroxide to kill the mold… I turned a beautiful hollow balsa single into a splotchy mess that way. Wherever the peroxide went, the balsa turned from a honey color to nearly white. Maybe someone else has some insights to killing the creeping green?
Hi, i built some boards with styrofoam and poplar on top similar to Danny Hess Boards’, and had similar problems once water starts leaking into the wood and the foam. The problem with poplar is, that it is quite sensitive to water, starts becoming grey and black dots appear. I would recommend to sand off the glass in the area where the water damage is visible, that would be at least the upper half on your fist pic. Otherwise the wood will not dry completly. Then let dry some more weeks (or go with vacuum), wait till the board weight is acceptable. Then fill the holes with epoxy/glass bubbles, then glass over.
I agree the Board Lady website has lots on how to deal with this very problem.
As for using bleach to get rid of the green, in my french polishing days we used to bleach wood using hydrogen peroxide, but then nutralised it with ammonia once the desired shade was achieved.
Warning: using these chemicals is VERY dangerous, so take extreme care (ie good ventilation, PPE etc).
put it in a vacuum bag with a towel to get it dry. heat and low humidity helps too. wood color will never go back to normal.
Thanks for all the advice. Im in san diego by the way. After considering everything I think the vacuum is the way to go. I have a shop vac and could put the nozzel right over that ding in the nose. Maybe throw a little duct tape around there to create a tight seal. Might even have to cut some 1/4 holes in those areas where its turning green and suckle that shop vac up to that. What do you guys think? Any advice for mcgyvering that shop vac to the board? Anything i should know? Never tried anything like this but i’m excited to learn. We’ll see how it goes i’ll report back and snap some pics.
you can try a shopvac but results will probably not be the best…if you get a tight seal with it, dont expect it to run very long without burning up.
you can make a vacuum setup with an old fridge compressor, some painters plastic and masking tape…
For water draining i prefer pressurize core with à manual pump, those for bike wheel, at one end and an open hole at other end. Not need lot pressure to see water going out.
It’s a shame they use shitty foam in such nice boards. Why not use some of the eps blown for surfboards that claim to minimize water absorbtion? Just saying… Mike
May be because it’s a fake…
My very low tech methhod for fixing my paddleboard was to use heat to get the moisture out. drilled a hole in the tail and kept the open ding in the nose open cover the board with black plastic and set it out in the sun. i checked on the board a couple of time and it was blowing out steam. I could feel the air coming out of the board and see small water drops around the rim of the dig and the 1/4 hole I drilled at the tail At the end of the day did a shop vac suckion for a about a 15 mins. checking the hose for signs of moisture. at the end of day two there was little air coming out and after a short run with the shop vac it seemed dry. Kept the board in the garage for two more days. Pretty sure i got all the water out. finishing up on the repairs and repainting.
Hope this helps
that sounds interesting… how big of a hole did you drill? in my situation i have that gash up by the nose, on a twin fin fish where would you drill the hole on the tail exactly? thanks!
So I put it in a black trash bag on a hot day for a while to get the board warmed up, drilled a 1/4" hole in the deck right in the middle of the area where it was turning green and then put the shop vac over the hole i drilled. Its working really well… if i stick my finger in that gouge i have up by the nose you can feel the suction going through the board. The water was in there for several months however so i might not be able to get it to the orginal weight, but if i can get a few pounds out i’d be happy…as long as its dry. Whatever is still in there im confident will come out doing this. Thanks to all for the great tips.
When i go to fix the hole in the nose i was thinking about packing the hole with stryofoam from some packaging i have and then squeezing a strip of poplar in there and then feathering with an orbit sander around the hole to bring the existing board flush with the wood piece, followed by standard epoxy s cloth glass job.
Sorry I did not get back to this thread sooner. i forgot to follow it. hope your repair is working out.
system 3 epoxy makes a light weight wood filler to mix in with epoxy resin I have done a small repair on a boat once it was varnished it was hard to see where the repair was.
repair
I have repaired a few firewires like that for mates… I just use a router to dig out a shallow hole where the hole is, leave it open for a few days to drain and then bog with epoxy cement and gloss over with a normal gloss. Not sure how to get the wood look though. Mabye veneer…
I made a similar repair on a bamboo skinned board. I think that may be Poplar. Same concept though, cut out the damaged area, fill the hole, sand it just below flush, and glass on a wood patch that goes beyond the damaged area and feather it back in.
Here’s some pics of my bamboo repair in process:
huh? what is fake?
Nice repair lawless!
So i’ve had the board hooked up to the shop vac about 2 hours this weekend in the hot sun. I guess its getting a little lighter. This board has sat soaked with water for several months so i’m not sure if the weight is salvageable. How many hours would you guys run a shop vac on this thing before throwing in the towel and proceeding to patch it?