I figure the first step towards making a board is fixing my own dings. Along those lines:
I seem to have gone over the falls and landed my posterior on the top of the rail. The obvious crack produced is right on the edge of the rail. Here is the obvious crack:
now there is also some damage on the top of the rail where my butt presumably impacted. It has what might be little cracks in a fish-scale-like pattern. Is that the weave I’m seeing? The board also seems slightly squishier in the fish scale area. Here is a pic:
So, in order to repair, do I just sand down the obvious crack and put some glass over it? reglass the fish-scaly area too? Just re-gloss the fish-scaly area? I wouldn’t think I would need to dig anything out and fill with q-cell, but the damaged area is slightly squishier.
This will be my first non-suncure repair. Looking forward to it.
how deep is the crack? the scaly area is the weave, had the entire gloss and hot coat flaked off? unless its tiny i always tend to sand it back and glass over it, though i’d wait for some of the old hands advice first!
but in the mean time this is a good place to start:
the main crack reaches the weave for sure, but I don’t think it goes through the weave.
Nothing has flaked off on the scaly bit. It feels quite smooth when a fingernail is run over it. Is it possible that the weave pulled apart from the foam in that spot without cracking the glosscoat?
I could just sand the whole thang down and glass over it, but I’m trying to educate myself. Learning is fun.
sand out all fractured, torn, cracked, weakened glass with a block & paper, & a utility knife if need be.
once the damaged areas are well sanded, patch with cloth. you might need a few layers of cloth to fill the sanded area, if it sits a little proud, that’s good.
once it’s all dry, sand flush to the board using block & paper.
clean up with wet & dry. go surf.
hope that helps. ding repair is a great way to enter the world of making surfboards. it’s how i started. best of luck on your journey.
Right on, learning to fix your own dings is great experience and can really give you some working knowledge with resins. That’s how I learned! But I was a hacker before Sways. Now I am just “kind of” a hacker.
At this point I try to match the repair to the damage - sounds simple, but I can’t count how many times i got carried away and a repair became far more complicated than was necessary. Some dings just need to be sealed to prevent water from getting to the foam.
Like everyone else I started off with fixing dings and ended up making boards.
I’m a fan of acatate sheets for overhead projectors, you can see the bubbles through them and they’re great for rails. Although in emergencys i’ve used glossy cardboard from boxes or flyers and sanded the colour off afterwards. Coffee shop wooden stirrers make good mixing sticks, grab a handful next time your in one.
I’m no expert, but if the mushy part of the rail is really soft, you probably should either cut the glass out or fill back behind it. Most likely it’s mushy because the foam has been compressed. To avoid cutting out glass unnecessarily in mushy spots that aren’t structurally sound, I have had good luck with drilling a couple of small holes in the glass and filling the void with a fairly runny qcell resin mix. Pour it in the holes, grab a toothpick or similar item to poke out bubbles, fill holes proud and sand flush. Lay up a 4oz or lighter patch over the scaled cracked glass, carefully tape a sheet of wax paper over ding to squeegy flat, then sand smooth.
I have been spending some time repairing my boards and have been having a problem with the resin not bonding . It flakes up afterward. I sanded all around the ding area but it still didn’t bond. Any pointers.
Also, what happens if you sand through the repair cloth. Is that bad? I didn’t figure it was if it wasn’t right over the ding and if I did a good hot coat over the top after sanding.
I’ve always had problems with sanding my repair, I will sand the area around the ding and sometimes even get to the weave. I have started taping around my ding to stop this but I was just wondering if anybody has any other ideas how not to do this.
under “anatomy” on the board lady’s site, all the way at the bottom, she explains…
“One of the many new single-skin fiberglass over EPS core boards. I don’t get it - all the extra cost and vulnerabilities of Epoxy, with mechanical properties worse than the old-fashioned glass board. At least those did not soak up water…”
