I know generally you are suppose to fill dings with lam resin but can you use Hotcoat resin if you prepare the surface really well? It would seem that using hotcoat resin would make the sanding a lot easier to get the shape right and not gum up tons of sandpaper. Also what is the easiest way to get rid of all the wax on the top of the board where you have to fix the ding? I first scrape it off but it still leaves a small layer. What will take off this final layer and have the board stripped of all wax?
Gregg, After you let the sun warm it up a little (a hair dryer or heat gun will work too) scrap off as much wax as you can with a plastic squeege. Then put some foam dust in doubled nylon stocking and rub the board with it. The wax will come right off. A little acetone wipe and the residual is gone. I think sanding resin is the ticket for most ding repairs once you get the hole filled properly. I always start by laminating a foam plug into a nice clean wedge cut or by routing out the destroyed section with a rose burr on my dremel tool and doing the same. I prefer to use white gel coat with a layer of 6oz between the old and new foam for the lamination so everthing is white and I get a nice strong seam. I’m sure the pros have lots of other tricks that may be better but this is fairly simple turns out pretty strong and isn’t too heavy or obtrusive. Mahalo, Rich
Gregg: Clean the area around the ding repair. Got some wax left? old foam dust from your shaping room rubbed around with a rag or a piece of carpet. Cornmeal works well too. Acetone will clean all, just use it with care and watch out for pinlines artwork and spontaneous combustion. Don’t get in too big a hurry, fix it once and do it right. Clean it, sand it and the surrounding area and try to taper the ding repair so your various steps will end up being flush with the original shape. Heres what you want to do: Clean it, sand down an area including the ding and surrounding area so you have a nice taper down to the deepest part of the ding. Use resin with some sort of filler to fill the hole, I like DE (diatamaceous earth, the white powder used in pool filters), Herb uses the filling from diapers which sounds good, and others use cabosil or microballon fillers. You need something besides straight resin to fill holes, its thicker and easier to work with and will be stronger. After it gels a while I like to use an old surform blade or 50 grit paper to do some shaping and rough finishing BEFORE it hardens, just do it carefully and not to close to the finished outline. Next day or later, sand it down to your finished shape and glass it with cloth and lam resin then hotcoat. Let it dry, and finish sand it and use some gloss resin or poly finsh depending on how the rest of the board is finished. Fix it right the first time and don’t worry about it again. Tom S.
I’m sorry but once you have build the board, ie: shaped it, glassed it with lam resin, hot coated it. and finished coated it. You never need to use Lam resin again… The only reason you use Lam resin to start with it so you don’t have to sand it before you hot coat it, and a ding repair you are always goin to have to sand it down, so use sanding resin. Make it easy on yourself.
Yea i would have to agree with these guys here also. We use sanding resin, mixed with Filler to fill the ding. then sureform worksgreat to get it down to shape. Just make sure that you do it after it gels. If you dont get back to it in time a backing pad on a drill with 60-80 grit sand paper works good too. Takes a lil longer and you have to be more carefull also. To get the area clean i found a flatblade works great. You have to do it slow at first untill you get the feel. But it is very quik method to get a area clean around the ding. Just dont creat another one with the blade. Curl the tips up a lil bit so you wont catch an edge. Well have fun fixin. Hope it goes well. http://dirtyglassing.com
White spirit, terpentine, sitrus oil or ski wax remover solvent will all remove surfboard wax. Wipe with acetone afterwards to make sure all remains of oil is gone. regards, Håvard
If you just want to surf and don’t want to go through all of those time consuming steps, check this out. http://www.dingleberriessurf.com
and be careful with wax removing solvents… with the acrylic spray finishes, you may end up making a mess.
and be careful with wax removing solvents… with the acrylic spray finishes, >you may end up making a mess. Actually, the ones I mentioned are easier on the acrylic finish acetone which will disolve the acrylic finish(Atleast the one I’ve got on my board). regards, Håvard
Hot Sun with some sort of a scraper and then plain old naptha from the paint store,it is the best wax cleaner around and very mild.Acetone is not that good and will eat acrylic finishes if used improperly.The foamdust or sawdust scrub is good but a lot of the folks out there don’t have it laying around. R.B.
Goo-Be-Gone has worked great for me. You can get it at any hardware store