Hi all:
broke my girlfriend’s SUP, would like to fix it up but have a method question.
The nose broke off, snapped all the way through the foam, but the glass on one side is intact. So my question: does this original glass add any appreciable strength? For example: I could just cut the glass and pretend that it snapped all the way through, and just fix it like normal. Add some dowels, etc.
But. If that original sheet of glass add anything… should I leave it? fix around it, like more of a deep ding? In this case, what’s the best way to add dowels? Normally, i’d slide them in, but when your nose is attached, you can’t really do that, because to slide them in and make them longish you need the two pieces to be far engouh apart that you can fit the dowels in between them, Could fix like normal with no dowels and then route channels in and drop them in, but the seems like it would do more harm than good. OR maybe no dowels are needed? She mostly jsut uses it on tiny, kneehigh or under days, so it doesn’t actually need to be super strong.
I definitely had trouble explaining what I’m asking. Happy to rephrase if it didn’t make sense.
Attached photos. First two are showing the actual break on the deck side. Last photo shows the bottom, where the break didn’t break through the glass.
Any input is appreciated. thanks!
Hi -
I’d definitely leave the one side (the good side) alone unless careful assessment reveals some sort of peeling back of the fiberglass. Look it over real good to see if there are any stress cracks. If not, just leave it. With the graphics more or less intact, it’ll look better.
On the other side… maybe just get yourself a bag of Bar-B-Que skewers and glue a few in to one side of the break with 5-minute epoxy. Just leave a couple inches of the skewers sticking out. When the epoxy is cured, use more epoxy or Gorilla Glue and stick it all back together where it belongs. Use some tape or something to hold it in place. The BBQ skewers are mainly just to hold it in place while it cures. Eyeball it as best you can to maintain the original alignment and rocker.
Don’t worry too much about internal reinforcement. The board didn’t come with a stringer so no big deal. If you do some testing with scraps of EPS you’ll see that 2 pieces glued together with Gorilla Glue won’t break at the glue line proving that the joint itself isn’t the weak spot.
Once it’s straight and everything is solid go ahead and scuff the crap out of the top side and rails with coarse sandpaper. Mask off the rest of the board with tape and paper. Mix up some cabosil or micro-balloons and epoxy to make a slurry/bog/bondo. Apply that stuff to any holes or defects and sand it smooth before adding a fiberglass ‘belt’ over the break. Use at least one layer of glass. A couple of layers might be better. Use epoxy resin to apply the glass belt.
Add a filler coat or two and get ready to some more sanding.
When that cures and you’ve sanded it smooth, you might want to try and match the color with some rattle can spray paint. Maybe even pinline the repaired area? It just depends on how detailed you want to get.
The structural repair and waterproofing is where you want to focus most of your attention. Again - EPS is very weak so no need to over-engineer anything. It looks like a basic fiberglass/epoxy glass job - no vacuumed sandwich composite skin or anything.
If you have a dog, now would be a good time to stick on a dog pad up front. You could cover most of the repair with that.
Align the break back to its original position.
Hold with clamps, tape or whatever will keep it in position.
Then rout through the deck into the foam and glue in dowels from the top. Glue break during this step.
Fill in on top of the dowels with cabosil mix.
Wrap break with glass and smooth when set.
Hide wrap with foam pad.
I say strip the entire board and shape it down to a noserider.
