I returned from a surf yesterday to discover a couple of fairly long gloss coat cracks radiating from the front of the fin box. My board is a 9'2 longboard in polyester and I would like some advice on the best way to fix these cracks if indeed I need to.
I have done a couple of searches and the advice seems to vary from using a dremel to create a 'trench' and then filling with hot coat at one end of the scale, to those who advocate full surgery!
The resin swirl is pretty important to me as I shaped and glassed the board myself - I would like to avoid having to remove it if possible.
The cracks don't yield to presseure and can just about be felt when you run your fingernail perpendicular to them.
surfer35, Here's a pic with no 10" box notice the crack. I have done some repairs on 10" offical center boxes that have stress cracks just by using larger fins. Everything the other Swaylockian brothers say to do is great, but a simple way to solve the problem from starting is install your box with a cloth sock. The FCS center box has way to big a hole route and no glass inlay. Another thing to remember with a center box is tail rocker, when offical came out in the mid 80's boards had hardly any rocker. When longboards started the surge in early 90's with tail rocker the 10" center channel was the box of choice over offical. Interesting how history always repeats it's self.
I have just returned home with my board having spent the last week working on it in my workspace. I pretty much followed the advice from Lokbox the whole way through and I am really pleased with the result.
I couldn’t get my hands on any styrene, so I just cleaned up the area as best I could. I layed down a rectangular 4oz patch covering the main finbox followed by a much bigger 6oz patch covering the whole of the tail area, including the side-bite plugs too.
A sanding coat and gloss coat finished off the repair. I just need to wet-dry and polish. The sea has gone flat again here at the moment, so there is no immediate rush, I will try to finish everything this weekend.
I will post a couple of pics soon.
Thanks again to everyone for their help and enthusiasm, and its good to see Swaylocks back up and running!
Howzit surfer35, Lokbox knows what he is talking about and I would have done it the same way except I cut a triangle piece of fiberglass instead of a rectangle. Stress is one ofthe major factors in what makes those cracks happen.Aloha,Kokua
I layed a small rectangle of 4oz over the box (it had rounded corners etc) and covered that with a full patch which was traiangular at the leading edge to try and reduce the stress cracking caused by the perpendicular straight edge.
I layed a small rectangle of 4oz over the box (it had rounded corners etc) and covered that with a full patch which was triangular at the leading edge to try and reduce the stress cracking caused by the perpendicular straight edge.
I layed a small rectangle of 4oz over the box (it had rounded corners etc) and covered that with a full patch which was triangular at the leading edge to try and reduce the stress cracking caused by the perpendicular straight edge.
