Just for fun, and maybe for some edification to others, no matter how long you’ve been at it, what’s the one rookie mistake you remember the most and one you’ll never make again? Mine, first time glassing with epoxy resin after about 9 or 10 boards done with Polyester. Got it all mixed up, set it aside to tighten up a few things, and boom! It’s like a science experiment gone bad. Smoke and bubbles coming out of the cup with the real fear that the flames were next. It was for the lam on a balsa/eps compsand. Fortunatley none got on the board. The worst part was I was showing a friend how to glass a board. Was my face red! Lesson learned, once you mix epoxy, spread it. It needs room to breathe.
I glued up a stringer in a homemade eps blank at 7’4". Turned out to be 74 INCHES long and I didnt notice for over two weeks. Maybe my wife is correct and I have been hit in the head too many times… I’ve had smokers and tore off glass into a steaming heap as it kicked too soon, epoxy box install that melted through the deck. etc. The usual stuff. Mike
Love it!
Rooster!
Funny man!
Only done epoxy for repair and
eh had to ice down the first goes!
As a lad
I had a few “Hot batches”
And a few with the blue voodoo.
Forgot the catalyst as well.
Somethings you remember, yeah?
Here’s a good one!
Recently did a lam job (at night) using UV poly.
I use a syringe, yeah?
And I (thought) I sucked up MEKP.
Shot it in the batch and proceeded.
Towards the end I thinking WTF???
Lucky me, just put it out in the morning.
Eh next time really looked and?
Air!
What an ancient space case.
Decided to drill out my board for fcs plug install with a few more beers in me than I realized
Started drill on incorrect dot., about 4 inches too far forward.
Noticed before full puncture . Put down drill, grabbed another beer.
hmm… getting ready to install a FU/bahne box in a longboard, did not check depth setting of router, but simply plopped it into jig and routed away… all the way thru the deck of the board, just about the full length of the box… put router down…waited for irritation to fade away… then decided to patch the hole in the glass, splice in an new chunk of stringer and glue in some foam. Came back quite a bit later and AGAIN routed all the way through the deck a second time. Sheesh. Never reset the depth of the router bit…How dumb…
We all have “moments”. Sometimes two in a row.
OK. No one has two in a row. I was trying to be supportive. My heart was in the right place.
I may have to “unfollow” you.
How are you going to dig out of this? Pictures required
All the best
I did the exact same thing during my first time glassing. Mixed up more epoxy than I thought I’d need so I didn’t run out. Left a bunch in the pot. While I’m glassing I see this smoke coming out of the bucket and it’s melting the plastic bucket. Won’t do that again.
I’ve also put a futures box in backwards once. Didn’t notice till after doing the lam. Probably should have surfed it to see how that worked before I fixed it.
About 20 years ago I was glassing a longboard indoors. I had put plastic sheeting down thinking that would be a good way to protect the floor. All went well until I waterfalled resin off the rails. The plastic turned into a sheet of ice so slick that it was hard to stand. Meanwhile I’m trying to lap the rails. Towards the end the resin started sticking the plastic to my shoes as i walked around the board. That was an adventure but I pulled it off and still have the board.
doing an epoxy resin swirl, mixed up the colors in the part A, then poured in the part B and laminated a beautiful swirl…later that day the batch is still wet…i had mixed in more part A instead of part B after the color… had to pull off the glass and try again…
Did that with a skateboard once.
I’ve done done so many it doesnt count, router guide on reversed, leggie plug install kicked so fast it bubbled and melted the eps under the veneer of my first comp sand. Had the sticker tape over the finboxes come off as O was filler coating over them and had to come out every half hour for 5.5 hours and keep screwing the grommets and and out so they wouldnt get stuck in there. Didnt get to bed till 2 in the morning. Had the just finished board fall of my home made stands and put no less than 8 dings in the rail as it bounced off the saw horse, the rock garden edge and the outdoor chair that was beside it.
The best thing is I have always come up with a way to fix it with the advice of a few good people…
On Friday drove off with my new wetsuit draped across the trunk of my car.
Still not ready to giggle about that one.
My rookie mistake was once thinking I could freehand a small cut with a router…zip…3" gash…
Hey Chris, I did that once. I don’t know if you are old emough to remember Bayley Suits. Custom wetsuits. Measured you like a tailor and cut to fit. Great suits. I was so bummed. I had to revert back to my old “Animal Skin” Oneill with the zipper across the back.
I am still a rookie at color work. Every time I put pigment into resin it is an adventure. I have made a few ugly boards, but I think the ugliest was the board that I ended up trading to Rooster at the SA 2014 board swap. I definitely got the better end of that swap. I have gotten many a good ride with that Rooster board.
The stupidest think about the color job in question was that I just went for it from an artistic perspective – no planning involved. At one point in the process I looked at my gloved hand, which was all covered in red resin. For one retarded moment I thought that it would look good to add a hand print to the board. It was instantly obvious that this was a big mistake. It just looked like a bloody smear on an already messed up boad. In order to cover it up I added more red, but you can still see the outline of that handprint.
I found a good home for that board, Scott. Heh, heh,heh. I kept the fin, tho. You said it was your favorite fin. So you can have it back the next time I see you. Mike
That’s a bummer Jeff. 
On a positive note…
Super stoked that I found my wetsuit! An honest person picked it up. Woohoo!
Last April NJ had like 3 or 4 great weekends of surf in a row. As a working slob, those are my times to hit it. Got down there for one of these weekends and the swell was good, not too big, not too small. But the offshore winds were cracking… 25 MPH solid with higher gusts. But the swell looked like one of the fall swells out in SD county when the Santa Ana winds are roaring into a 5’ swell. It was beautiful.
It was a beautiful day, too. Sunny and pretty warm for April. Of course the water was still in the low 40’s so I needed the winter rubber. I take my 10’, well glassed whit whale of a longboard out and set it on the boardwalk right behind my car in what I think is a really really really great spot out of the wind. BTW, there are all these old folks out for their Sunday walks. Some had canes, some had walkers. A fragile bunch, overall. There were also young parents jogging with infant jogging strollers. A target rich environment, if there ever was one.
So I begin the dance. Squeezing into my new Patagonia 5.5mm winter suit with a smallish towel kind of wrapped around me while the local constible eyes my shenanigans from a far. I get the suit up about knee high when the mother of all gusts lifts the board and slams it into the metal railing on the other side of the boardwalk. I could hear the crunch of fiberglass from 20 feet away. Thankgoodness no one was hit by my stupid actions. But it gets better. I fall over in attempt to keep the board from flying away and I lose my towel. I fall on the asphalt, scuff my ass while hog tied by my very nice wetsuit and watch the policeman saunter over while writing an indecent exposure ticket. While he’s writing the ticket I at least get the wetsuit pulled up a bit but my board is grinding wounds against the steel pipes; and there is someone recording this fun on their phone. I have yet to find it on YouTube.
The board is useless and needs serious repair. I do have an unscathed 5/6" in the car, So I paddle out and make the best of a terrible situation and watch the screamers go past that would have been great for the white whale; the 5’6" was almost completely useless in these conditions and with all the rubber.
In the end I fixed the white whale, went to court and beat the ticket because the cop didn’t show. THE END
Mine’s similar to Chrisp’s. Years ago got a report of big winds & waves @ a favorite windsurf spot about 1 hour from my home.Organized all my gear in driveway next to truck to load to make sure I didn’t forget anything. Got a call while this & forgot to load wetsuit & towel. Drove all the way up. Perfect wind & waves. Couldn’t go out (water about 50 F). Turned around & drove home; grabbed wetsuit & drove back up compounding the error. Wind died as I was putting on wetsuit. Definite blue flame special moment.
O.K.
Here is a couple…
I swear this is the Gods truth!
@16 I got to use “the Bug” or VW to go surfing.
“Rincon racks”
Seemed like we always had four boards on
the “bug”.
First incident, dropping off all my buddies
last guy, yeah?
Forget to strap my 9-10 Harbor Sol down.
Zoom off
and see it lift off!
Screech!
Open door and try to catch it
opps, BOINNNG!
The thing just resonated and people came out to see me gaining control.
The last “bug” adventure “C” street
going off to the “Meta Market” up Figueroa to E. Thompson, yeah?
Let’s catch some air!!!
Floor it over the RR tracks
off fly’s the 4 boards!
Still attached the ever durable Rincon racks!
Eh, they landed racks down and skidded to a safe stop.
If my Oldman only knew…