first post..... sorry, surftech repair related

General Discussion
1

Wow, this one will read so bad I shudder to think what ive unleashed. Ive been reading for a year, never had anything constructive to add, and now a surftech question.

I am everything to be scorned here. work too much, 20 lbs overweight, live hours from surfable waves, east coaster, blah blah blah.

I bought a surftech for a couple trips west, and it was damaged on the way back from Mexico. It is one of the ugliest boards you have ever seen, so Im not pressed about the look here. Crinckled nose, and compression on the rail. no foam intrusion, or gaping holes. I do some fiberglass work on my boat, and have both marine text and west epoxy in the garage. I plan on painting ofer the patch with either white gellcoat, or auto touch up paint (i have them both)

Can anyone help me out with the best choice of materials here?

ps

If it helps any, my experience with this board has sold me on ordering a secret weapon from steve this fall. My other two boards are v beach and obx local shapers, and I never kick puppies. (but i do have to admit that the infinity hooked me with some drops that I NEVER

would have made on my triple stringer single fin.)

2

Hi Chris,

First, don’t sweat it. What you have and will wind up with…let me digress.

See, once opon a time, I finally did it. Sprung for a custom made fish pole, set up exactly right for the kind of fishing I like to do, light spinning tackle and live bait for striped bass and bluefish. Great pole… and the guy who made it offered a suggestion: 'Get another reel, put it on your old pole and that’s for those who want to go fishing with you. You don’t want them busting up your nice new pole, now do you. ’

Smart man, was ol’ McSquid, besides making a finestkind fish pole.

You’re gonna wind up with a great board for everybody who wants to go surfing with you but doesn’t have a board ( and you don’t want 'em thrashing yours) . And a great board for those small, crowded days when everybody wants to bump rails.

As you’re gonna be painting it anyhow ( the auto paint will be adequate, or hardware store Krylon ) then use marine-tex for filler, that &%$# Wildly Expensive Shoddy Technology resin with what glassing ( 6 oz cloth should be fine) you’re gonna need plus a fill coat when you’ve sanded the glass lightly. White marine-tex, if you have it, will prolly look a little better than the black/gray stuff. When using marine-tex, I try to get it in just right, 'cos you know what a pain it is to sand.

Then paint- gelcoat will require sanding the whole board and even then it’s a pain and doesn’t often work out too good, plus making it heavy enough that youll be in Hernia Country. I’d go for a neutral pale color, say a light blue or something, do the whole board. Krylon works okay, followed with the same wax you’d use for your fiberglass boat to make it nice and shiny on the bottom and rails.

Depending on how bad the nose is bent/buckled, I’d either live with it, glass over the wrinkles and call it good or sand it hard so it’s smooth, then glass over it with epoxy resin. The rail, just fill it and glass over, sand, do a hotcoat-like layer to fill the weave in the cloth, paint and call it good.

This isn’t gonna be high end restoration-grade ding repair, but lets just say it’ll be good enough, say as good as I’d do a rental board repair when I want to get it back to work ASAP.

hope that’s of use

doc…

3

Doc

great stuff and thanks. One point of clarification. The bashes are good size, but shallow (almost as if they where squeezes in, not bashed in with a hard hit. The nose crumple is a semi circle that traces the 1/4 outline of the nose (underside).

I have sanded them out without hitting foam. I was planning on filling in without using cloth. is the cloth to keep the filler (M tex/west) from popping out like a little nugget? Is the cloth to keep it water tight? I can use the weave no problem, but I always thought i only used weave when i could tie it into existing weave. (Like pulling out an area of glass to the foam, then laying wetted cloth to match the area, and feathering into the existing glass.)

Any repair weave would actually lay on top of the existing cloth (if thats what they use). Sorry if my follow up is not clear, but i want to do this effectively.

Thanks

Chris

PS its striper season on the Chesapeake, and my ugly but sturdy boat splashes this weekend.

4

Heee… no problema, man,

Squoze in they may be, forklift casualties or lashed down in a cargo hold too tight. No biggie.

I like to add cloth to the top of just about everything for the reasons you mentioned, the ‘popping out like a little nugget’ is an excellent description. If you sand the filler to shape or a little concave, the sanding that goes past the edges of the filler will give good enough ‘tooth’ to tie in the new cloth adequately. If you just bring the cloth ( in an area where there’s foam gone or something) to the old cloth, there really isn’t any overlap to give it strength, if you see what I’m driving at.

What I do is sand, clean out all the dust, lay my cloth on top dry and a little oversize compared with your filler patch ( call it 1/2" or better on all sides) , add resin to wet it out and then squeegee out the excess so that the weave texture of the cloth is there, barely without being too dry so you see the cloth fibers rather than just a texture. You get a nice, light, strong lamination that way. If some is a little low and won’t squeegee, that’s fine, you’re levelling it nicely.

When it’s dried/hardened, you can feather the edges of the cloth to get it smooth, sand it all lightly and then lay on more resin with a brush to get it nice and smooth. Sand with wet/dry paper down to 300 or so and plenty water to get it nice enough to spray paint. If you use 4 or 6 oz cloth, it’s thin enough that it won’t make any real bulges the way you’d get with heavier stuff like 10 oz.

A ‘real’ rubber or plastic squeegee is nice, but in a pinch some stiff shirt cardboard or a few heavy paper file cards or something like that will do well. I have also had good luck using phone cards, like you get for those long distance calling deals.

The wife’s credit cards are perfect for this job. Probably save enough in a month to buy a new board.

Some schoolie bass here now, but I’m waiting for the big suckers. Not that I really like bass, but I can give 'em away and have a few favors owed. Now, bluefish, filleted immediately and then soaked overnight in a spiced brine, then smoked over apple chips…that I keep.

hope that’s of use

doc…

5

Not sure I could ask for a better desrcription of the process. You clearly took some time and effort and I appreciate it. I will let you know how it comes out. I shall head back into lurkdom, as this place is best left to the pros - that is, until I stumble onto a big old longboard blank and some free time. I know I will have to make one just to scratch the itch.

Your a class act- thanks

chris

6

"Your a class act- thanks ’

tell that to my string of exes… who may not believe you. I’m no pro, just somebody who followed his hands into doing things and wound up here.

No big deal man. Just one condition comes with it all, like it did for me. You learn it, you gotta teach somebody else down the line.

That’s how it goes. It’s a good system.

doc…