Delam bubble fix - help

General Discussion
1

So I put this board in the oven (read: car) this morning for an hour or so just to “bake” it a bit and try to get a hard cure on the epoxy…

guess it wasn’t such a good idea. i went to do a little more sanding before the gloss coat this afternoon and found a nice 5 x 6 inch delam bubble in the tail. not happy about that…

so found this thread and I’m going to follow a bit of the advice of option #1

http://www.swaylocks.com/forum/gforum.cgi?post=172013;

I didn’t quite sand too far into the glass as suggested, but I guess I could get a bit more into it… just didn’t think I need to go too deep.

I’ve taken an exacto knife and cut a nice little flap to peel back a bit.

Here are the next steps of my plan –

  1. mix up some epoxy with cabo-sil (i don’t have any microballoons handy) and pour it in,

  2. try to squeeze out the excess

  3. drop some wax paper over the whole mess

  4. put a bag of sand over the whole thang

  5. add a layer of fiberglass over it all once it dries

  6. let it set, sand and hotcoat, gloss

sounds good? any feedback appreciated!

i want to look like it never happened, so i’ll probably have to go in and touch up a bit on the hotcoat with some paint where I exacto-ed it…

Here’s a few pics

2

Make sure you sand it flat after you take off the sandbag, before you add more glass.

3

I would suggest that you don’t thicken the resin much. Normally with delam’s you’re dealing with some missing foam because it was crushed or some other problem. In your case you want just enough resin to bind and you want all the excess to flow out.

I like to use flexible strips of wood under the bags. This forces the edges flush and maintains a smooth contour through the area.

Good luck.