First Buckled Nose Repair (with lots of pics)

iasmith0331 · August 5, 2012, 3:58pm

I have been a visitor to this site for a long time and finally went ahead and became a member a few weeks ago. Anyway I recently started work on my first major repair (buckled nose). Up to this point I have done many small ding repairs, but usually with suncure or other quick UV activated fillers, never something this extensive.

Anyway I thought it might be a good idea to post my progress for reference for others as well as the hope that someone out there might be watching and can tell me what I’m doing wrong (or right). Here goes…

This is the original damage. I came down from a floater on a low tide beach break and the nose hit the ground causing it to buckle. The stringer is still mostly intact and there is some compression on the bottom of the board. The top is surprisingly still in pretty good shape.

I strapped the board to a piece of plywood with a large wad of packing paper underneath to get the rocker right…

…cut the delaminated glass out with a razor blade…

As you can see there was some rail damage as well. I removed all the cracked/delaminated glass and sanded…

Here you can see where I routed out the compressed foam…

I used some foam from an old broken tail I kept around just for such an occasion. It had been sitting around taking up space in my garage for the past 2 years or so, now I’m glad I didnt toss it…

Greenroom Epoxy and Q-Cell mix to glue the foam in…

Sanding down the foam/resin

Ready for the next coat of Q-Cell and resin

Here is the next filler coat. I’m glad I taped off the repair area, this one got a little messy. I think I should have thickened up the mix with a little more Q-Cell, it was a little more runny than I wanted and hard to build a thick layer up. I will be sanding this afternoon and will decide from there whether I need another Q-Cell coat or not.

I do have a couple of questions if anyone is listening…

-Can you mix too much Q-Cell in with the resin? I thought I almost had too much in that last batch but it turned out to be more runny than I wanted.

-How much of a gap can I expect my lamination to cover? I’d really like to get away with not doing another filler coat but I will if I think it’s necessary.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I will hopefully have some more pics this afternoon.

iasmith0331 · August 11, 2012, 9:22pm

Well I ended up taking it out anyway in some chest high blown out windswell. No problems, it held up great. I know I should have waited but I couldn’t resist and I’m glad I did. Thanks for everyones advice, I learned a lot through this process.

iasmith0331 · August 10, 2012, 10:27pm

Sanding hot coat

iasmith0331 · August 10, 2012, 10:30pm

New Question, hopefully someone is still listening…

How long should I let this thing cure before I take it back out in the water? I am hoping the answer is that I can use it tomorrow morning but I dont think that that is what I am going to hear. From everything I’ve read about epoxy it takes a few days to fully cure. I did do my last lamination on the 7th though and the last couple of days have just been hot coat, which from what I understand is cosmetic more than anything. Any advice???

iasmith0331 · August 7, 2012, 11:13pm

Deck lamination done. This one went much cleaner and easier with a little bit of planning.

iasmith0331 · August 6, 2012, 11:13pm

2 layers 4 oz. S-glass for each the deck and bottom per Pete and Doc’s advice, cut into a diamond shape

So here I have the bottom laminated. I mixed up way too much resin and forgot to tape off the area before I started mixing. Better planning next time

It got a little messy on the edges…more sanding to come…

doc · August 6, 2012, 11:53am

Hi Ian,

Well, as I mentioned, chilling the epoxy will slow things down - make the reaction proceed more slowly, as will doing the job out of the sunlight. And there are fast and slow hardeners for most epoxy resin systems. It’s a good idea to keep at least some of the various hardeners for your particular resin around unless you have the luxury of working in a climate-controlled shop or whatever. Just so you can deal with temperatures and special situations.

As I’ve learned the hard way ( yeah, there IS a pattern there, pathetic though it is) you want to mix the resin and hardener to exact factory specifications and mix it well before adding anything else, like filler powder or colors or what have you.

Again, the vast majority of my experience is with polyester resin, not epoxies, so I’ll happily defer to those here who know a whole lot more about it/have far more experience with it.

hope that’s of some use

doc…

iasmith0331 · August 6, 2012, 2:59am

Wow, sounds like I made this repair a lot more difficult than it needed to be. Oh well, definitely learning a lot in the process.

Doc,

That info is great, very detailed. For this repair I’m using epoxy because I have a good local source for it and from what I’ve heard it’s a little easier/safer to work with. What are some of the epoxy tricks you alluded to?

Jesus,

Thanks for the description of the thickness as wood putty. If I would have known I could mix it that thick I would have definitely had more confidence in filling the original gap without routing.

Ian

jesus · August 6, 2012, 2:19am

When I do filler with q-cell I mix alot of q-cell with my epoxy.I like it thick like wood putty,mash it in to the ding then scrape it flat with a bondo spreader.I leave it a little high so I can sand it flush later.It sands like hard foam.When glueing in foam plugs I use the “dries white gorrilla glue” from home depot.It foams a bit so use spareingly,paper thin layers as it expands 5-10x depending on humidity. Odd the board buckled right at the gopro mount.

doc · August 6, 2012, 1:12am

Hi Ian,

You can go quite thick with filler/resin mix. But there’s a few tricks to it. I’ve never seen foam melt from an overly hot batch in a ding repair…but I have watched one slowly burn all the foam out of a board, leaving a somewhat blackened stringer and a hollow glass shell full of soot.

And of course when a big wad of resin plus filler goes off too hot it tends to crack, which is no fun at all.

The only times I’ve seen foam melt was when somebody used polyester resin ( which is thinned with styrene monomer) with polystyrene foam, styrofoam. See, then the styrene softens the foam to the consistency, appearance and structural strength of Marshmallow Fluff. Which then has to be cut out and it makes a small job into a major and ugly project.

Some rules of thumb, as it were, for resin and using it for dings. I’m gonna assume that you’re using polyester resin. Epoxy has some other tricks , but lets concentrate on polyester.

Things that make it go off faster are heat, sunlight/UV light and thick layers…the latter heat up, make it go off faster, which in turn makes more heat…and doing all three on a hot, bright August day is how Foggy set that board I mentioned above on fire. And of course there’s adding more catalyst, which I think he did too- he was in a hurry 'cos it was a hot day and he wanted about a dozen cold beers.

Things that slow it down are cold temps, low light, less catalyst, filler powders, pigments ( usually, unless it’s a dark pigment set to dry in the sun) , thin layers or thinning the resin with either acetone or styrene monomer.

Now, when I was doing a thick or deep repair with resin and filler, what I’d do was go light on the catalyst and do it in the shade. Premix the powder and resin to get the consistancy right for the particular job - thin like heavy cream for when it had to flow into a crack or crevice, thick like mayonnaise when I wanted to do something like squeegeeing it to fill to the edges of the cut away glass like you’re dealing with. Then add catalyst and mix well. Figure what you’d use for an equivalent amount of plain resin for general use and then maybe go with half that or less if it’s really hot. It will still go off and harden, it will just take longer and with any luck, be less brittle than a hotter, faster hardening batch.

Something else to remember about hot batches in deep dings, by the way, is that your typical ding filler is surrounded by foam…which is a Really Good insulator, so it gets hot, and then gets hotter. All the heat goes back into your hardening resin. With results you can probably predict, no?

As I said, this is for polyester resin and polyurethane foam. Epoxy and styrene foam are different, and you absolutely have to mix resin and hardener just like they tell you to, but again shade, cool and maybe chilling the resin beforehand can help you out there.

hope that’s of use

doc…

doc · August 5, 2012, 11:29pm

I’ll second Pete on everything he said - the glass is the only strength there, you definitely need it top and bottom, well lapped by the rails.

Now, you might want to ask yourself if routing out the old foam was really a good idea. The thing is, if you’d simply filled the crack in the foam and the abrupt transition where you cut away the delammed glass, well, after you routed out foam, bedded new foam in goo, added more goo around it to bring it up to glass level, it probably weighs more than if you’d just filled that small crack and evened things out.

And then there’s the joys of sanding filler and foam together. Whoops, sanded the foam too much, gotta add some filler there, then sand again and whoops again… you see where that’s going? Right, degree of difficulty just went up a few numbers.

I’ll bet you can guess how I found out about that one. Hint: it wasn’t from watching somebody else. Nope, I made those little errors all my very own self. Curse, snarl…

Plus, well, routers have a place in surfboard work: fin boxes and plugs and that’s about it. The number of times I have seen a simple repair made into a nightmare by somebody with good intentions and a router…ayeeee. Nobody, least of all me, is good enough to do that kind of work freehand.

There are exceptions to the ‘Never Use A Router for Surfboard Repair’ rule , but that’s done with matching jigs for the cutout in the board and for cutting a foam piece to fit that cutout that’s such a tight fit that you don’t need or want filler, just a little glue. Done that way, the repair can be made truly invisible.

hope that’s of use

doc…

iasmith0331 · August 5, 2012, 10:09pm

Actually I was planning on only laminating the bottom and rails with 2 pieces of 4 oz. S-cloth. I was thinking it might be a good idea to put another patch on the deck but because it didn’t delaminate at all on the deck I wasn’t sure if it was necessary. So I guess you’re saying I definitely should? Also, as far as the taped up area that was just to minimize the mess with the Q-cell. I plan on giving it a good overlap.

Thanks for your advice Pete

iasmith0331 · August 6, 2012, 12:24am

Doc, thanks for your input. The reason I decided to rout out the old foam and put in those blocks is that I was concerned about the temperature of the resin melting the foam if I tried to fill such a deep gap (about 1/2" deep). I’ve read so many horror stories about melted foam and this is my first time working with this resin. Is there a general rule of thumb as to the max depth of a gap you can safely fill with Q-cell mixed resin without any exotherm problems?

As far as the extra work sanding I know exactly what you were talking about after today. I’ve got it all pretty much evened up and ready for lam. I’ll put some more pics of the progress up tomorrow.

Ian

petec · August 6, 2012, 12:45am

PU foam won’t melt, can’t tell from the photos if this was EPS. If it is EPS, there are better ways to fill a crack than splicing in foam or just epoxy filling. Like using pour foam or even gorilla glue if not much foam is missing. On poly resin, if you fill too much it’ll start smoking and gets really brittle. How deep to fill is a matter of experience. FCS holes for example, I fill in two pours and this should give you some idea of fill volume. Keep in mind that the more spread out the resin is (including epoxy) the less heating you’ll have. Understand that all of the filling in this repair provides no strength, just a form for the laminated glass and that’s why you need to do both sides.

iasmith0331 · August 6, 2012, 1:08am

Pete, that makes sense. That info will definitely come in handy for future repairs. The board is PU, I am using the greenroom epoxy for the repair simply because it’s what I have on hand and is available locally for me straight from the shop. I have been pretty happy with how easy it is to work with and sand but that’s a whole different topic.

As far as filling gaps with Q-cell, how thick do you usually mix it? I had it really thick for my last layer but I still had some issues with it draining a little. I just don’t know if I could mix in too much and ruin a batch of resin, etc.

I have heard of the pour foam method but had trouble finding some last minute and I really just wanted to get started on the repair. Trial and error, I’m sure you know how it is.

Again, thanks for your advice.

Ian

petec · August 5, 2012, 8:55pm

Very small voids can be filled immediately before lamination, as you smooth them out with the cloth. Use a lam resin filler, and have everything ready to lam before you start. On the lamination, the general rule I use as to the width needed is at least 1-1/2 times the width of the board at the buckle. From the photos the area you have masked is too narrow. You can free lap or cutlap, but you need to fully go around the rail on both sides; the longer the better. 2 layers of 4 oz. each side, use a smaller width on the top layers for feathering. And you’ll need to remove the camera mount on the deck. I hope that you weren’t planning on just glassing the bottom/rails. Good luck.

iasmith0331 · August 5, 2012, 4:28pm

One more question…do I need to sand this last coat before applying another layer of Q-Cell thickened resin or will it chemically bond well because the resin is still fresh?

iasmith0331 · August 5, 2012, 4:28pm

One more question…do I need to sand this last coat before applying another layer of Q-Cell thickened resin or will it chemically bond well because the resin is still fresh?