One of my friends is a good surfer , but doesnt have a lot of money, i gave him a board and after owning it for about 2 weeks he fell on it and crushed the rail with his knee, its a round ding about the size of a cd and goes midway through the board in the direct center of the board.He got some cash together and had a local shop fix it but they just globbed sun cure in it and it just cracked again , so today i took my sander and got most of their repair out. So now i need a way to fill it in and get the original shape of the rail back , and i dont have any foam from blanks left over and dont want to go down the spray foam road. Anyone have any suggestions?P.s , i dont have a digital camera so unfortunatly i cant post any pics.
J.G.
I am by no means an expert, but I had a similar problem with a board and here’s what I did:
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Make sure all broken glass, dirt, etc is out of the foam and that it’s nice and dry.
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Make a dam around the ding with 3M #233 tape.
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Mix up a bact of lam resin with lots of Cabosil (white filler stuff available in most shops)
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Lightly catalyze off some of the mixture and fill the cavity about a 3rd full, wait 'til it goes off fill, catalyze some more fill the next 3rd, repeat unitl the hole is full. Make sure to set each batch of resin off slowly so there is no overheating.
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Pull the tape after the last batch gels and careful “sculpt” the contours you need with a razor while the resin is still a little plyable. Make sure it is nice and firm so you don’t just tear it all out.
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Let it sit for 24 hours.
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Use 80 grit paper and work the hardened resin / cabosil fill down to your desire shape. Try to go just below, maybe 1/16" below the non-damaged areas.
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Carefully rought up the surrounding glass with some 80 grit. Maybe 1/2" perimeter around your ding.
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Lam with desired glass amount (2x 4oz. layers) overlaping onto your roughed up perimeter.
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Hot coat and sand / polish it out to the desired finish.
Good Luck
thanks , i found a chunk of foam in my garage taht was attatched to a fin i snapped off , so i shaped that as close as i could and used some resin to attatch it , after it dries ill finish shaping it , fill in any holes then glass over it with some 6 ounce so it never breaks again , does anyone see any problems with this? I’m not so much concerned with looks as i am it just being surfable.
No problems at all with your method, I’d just add some glass to the general area as a deck patch to keep that from happening again.
hope that’s of use
doc…
If repaired well, the board will likely live a long life. Today I surfed a thruster that a friend gave me for free. When I got it, it had a huge chunk out of one rail, basically at the wide point of the board. About 1 foot long by about 4" towards the stringer was totally missing! The glass on bottom was also loose an additional few feet on each side of the missing chunk. Well, a local ding repair guy fixed it for me and though it looks ugly because the replacement foam has less uv fading than the rest of the board and you can tell where all the new glass went in, you can’t feel the repair at all and I’ve surfed this board on the best days each winter for the last few years! Still holding up well. One of the best $100 I ever spent.