I have been lurking for almost a year and have learned much from swaylocks. But now I am in a minor panic. My seventeen year old son volunteered to do a ding repair for one of his teachers. He repairs his own boards and is getting better so I thought “no problem I’ll help if he needs it”. Then I saw the board; it is a 60’s (?) or 70’s long board by an unknown shaper and in terrible condition. The ding in question had long ago been covered by duct tape, more than half of the bottom had delamed and is of sentimental value to the teacher. We have shaped and glassed a board together (thanks to your help) and while it is a long way from professional I thought why not just cut the bottom out and replace the glass.
Well we glassed the bottom, using RR epoxy, last night and it went pretty well. Today I went out to hot coat and the epoxy had not adhered to the rails at all. I am assuming that they did not get cleaned properly. I cut the glass and epoxy off of the rails and now have basically a butt joint between the old glass and the new. I thoroughly cleaned the entire board with wax and grease remover and sanded a 2-3" strip along the rail. So should I:
Cut a 4" wide strip of glass and overlap the old and the new glass
Add another entire layer on the bottom and wrap the rails with this
Just hot coat as is
Continue to use epoxy or switch to Polyester, I didn’t think that there was anything epoxy would not stick to
To make matters worse this is a Christmas present to the teachers’ son who is returning from Iraq.
Im wondering if you sanded the board down enough initially? throughly sand the board with 100 grit so there’s enough texture to bond with?
As for epoxy, it works fine for me, I use it all the time on poly repairs. I find that the epoxy hoatcoat comes out shiner than the rest of the board : )…until you sand it.
One downside if you are in a time crunch, epoxy takes forever to kick since its so freaking cold outside unless you do it inside with heaters(Im in the garage). Im using Revchem epoxy, it kicks quite slow…its taking 24 hrs for a hoat coat to dry. UV poly would kick super fast, and its easy to work with since you don’t have to mix anything…isnt too expensive either.
Old boards have a lot of contamination imbedded in the glass. You have to almost sand them down to the weave to get a good bond even with poly resin. I would not recommend integrating different resins on a given board. Switch to poly for reworking your original repair, and be sure to have a large overlap on the old glass (thoroughly sanded) to fair into. Skip paint prepping products and just use acetone; these can inhibit bonding.
Epoxy over poly is fine. Don’t lap the strip of cloth over the unsanded areas. Keep the new cloth over sanded areas only. This might mean going back and sanding the area wider. Use no finer than 80 grit, and do get down to the weave. Put on latex gloves, and give it a wipe with a CLEAN cloth dampened with DNA. Let dry. Wet out the strip of cloth and pull all the excess resin out. It’s gotta be tight.
Then fair out the edges, sand the entire board, and hotcoat to seal it all in.