Help with a rail ding

General Discussion
1

Hey all,

Got a nice deep rail ding the other day.

Looking for advice on how to fix it. I’m planning on cutting out the ding, leaving as much foam as I can and then filling with qcel.

I’m worried that if I just follow the shape of the cut/ ding as it is now will compromise structural integrity of the board greatly. I’ve looked around online and see that some people advise cutting out a square + plugging it with a new piece of foam, others have said to cut out a triangle for better strength.

Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated.

pics:

https://imgur.com/a/7mPDT3Y

2

Looks like a fin hit the rail? Good times indeed.

I tend to cut out just enough foam to make a shape that’s easy to fill well. I end up making a semi circle sort of shape that is easy to poke into, so that when I pour filler in, I can make sure it fills the whole cavity. When you clean it up before you fill, get rid of any compressed foam and any glass that’s no longer rigid. But don’t cut out more than you need, because you can end up making more work out of it.

And once it’s filled and pretty, sand a larger area all around so that your cloth patches are covering about twice the area of the fill. Small patch first, larger patch over.

I think Fibreglass Hawaii have some good little videos on their site/youtube.

Structurally, you won’t notice it … until the next fin hits it.

Good luck!

3

Jeez, everybody wants to be a surgeon, cut this, rout that, saw saw saw- all bad ideas, They almost always turn out to look like crap too. 

If you want to do something with a knife, use something like an X-acto knife, get the crunched in glass lifted out as close to the original surface as you can. Don’t cut away anything that you can get filler behind.

Then, one of my favorite cheats for something like this: Gorilla Glue. On a newer board, I’d say use the ‘clear’ which goes off to a white foam, but as your board is a little sun-browned, I would use the ‘original’, which goes off as a sort of tan color… Get a very little fresh water in the ding, Gorilla  Glue is moisture-catalysed urethane, the girlfriend’s plant mister is ideal. Then, get the glue well into the crevice and all through the ding. Tape over with wide masking tape, don’t go wild.

Go away for a while… Come back, the tan foam has probably blown the tape off, that’s okay. Sand the foam with coarse sandpaper to get it flush with the original glass, sand the glass nearby so the new glass will stick and there you go, ready to glass, and that’s what you do next. And you can take it from there.

hope that’s of use

doc…

4

Yupppp, just glad it wasn’t me.

Thanks for the info - I’ll check out the Fibreglass Hawaii videos! 

5

Thanks doc - I appreciate the info!

Just wanted to get some clarification - will Gorilla Glue work for an epoxy board if its polyurethane? Sorry if these are dumb questions.

Also, would I be needing to mix in qcel with the gorilla glue, or would I just be using the glue to fill the gap? 

Thanks again, really appreciating you guys sharing your knowledge here. 

6

Not at all, the old cliche is right, the only dumb question is the one you don’t ask. 

Gorilla glue and epoxy, shouldn’t be an issue. It’s the underlying foam that’d be the issue, and as far as I know, the glue doesn’t give off anything (like styrene monomer) that would be a problem with styrene foam. With urethane foam, no problem at all…

As for adding q-cell and the like, the only reason you use them is  as thixotropic agents, to make the liquid into a thicker liquid or a putty, doesn’t really do anything one way or another for the hardened resin. The glue might tend to dribble out, that’s how come the masking tape. Also, a little pressure from the tape tends to make the glue expand a touch less, be a little harder and denser.

hope that’s of use

doc…

7

Doc gives some good advice here. To clarify, Gorilla Glue, the foaming kind, works great with polystyrene. I use it to glue stringers on my EPS blanks. Epoxy sticks to it just fine also. I agree with Doc to try and pry out as much of the original glass and fill behind it. If done correctly, you can make your ding almost disappear.

8

What doc said.  T-total agreement.  When doc posts and gives info on “how to”;  I look at the screen and shake my head in agreement.  But readers can’t see that so thought I’d type it.  Lowel

9

Question on the Gorilla Glue. When cured, will it absorb water? Of course if I used it, I would use fiberglass and resin just like any ding repair, I’m just curious about the nature of it. If it sealed and didn’t absorb water, it would make for a good travel temporary emergency ding repair that could then be finished at a later time. 

10

Excellent question. And I don’t have a certain answer for you. 

The thing is, Gorilla Glue is a polyurethane resin/adhesive foam, depending on the pressure in the glue joint. Makes it nice for fixing things like commercial bartstools, where the original hole has been worn or worked bigger over time and repairs postponed. And the hole isn’t as tight as you would like. The stuff forms a skin that I think is fairly water resistant

But when it’s expanding against no real pressure ( a taped over ding for instance) it’s not as dense, nor as hard, and it will expand past the original size of the cavity, so you would sand it to shape and then you have the foam itself opened up - I think it would take on water about as easily as a standard garden variety polyurethane foam blank would, no reason to think it wouldn’t. And then, when you were ready to do the final permanent repair you would want to get the wet foam out. 

Now, having said that, a few things. 

I don’t know for sure either way, does it absorb water or not. Never tried it. The way to find that out would be to take some, a blob, weigh it with a fairly sensitive scale, put it in water (maybe with a weight on top of it) leave it there a while, then take it out and weigh it again. I’d maybe try it with some foam blank scrap/cutoffs alongside the Gorilla Glue blob, and also another blob with the skin sanded or cut away to expose the foamy interior to see what that does. 

Next- while the Gorilla Glue foam isn’t gonna be structural reinforcement the way glass cloth is, it is a very good filler. Put some in, let it go off, sand, impervious tape ( like shipping tape) over it, it’s a good temporary repair, certainly better than the sun cured glop. And ideally, when you take the tape off it doesn’t take any of the foam with it and you can just glass it. 

And then there is this. The foam is an easy and fast filler, sanding it is far easier than sanding a resin filler plug and for the time and effort expended using some of the sun cured and sanding it and all you could hit it with the GG, sand that when it’s cured and then put a cloth patch over for a good, very solid repair. 

Sorry I’m not more help here. 

doc…

 

11

Hey Doc,

Just checking in - did the repair this week (my first real repair, ever!)

I’ve attached a couple of pictures for your reference. Thanks alot for the advice, I really appreciate it. Saved me some money and got me in the water faster than if I had sent it out for a repair. Gorilla Glue is great, though I did get some on my shirt on accident. The repair seems to be working fine, I hope! Not the prettiest job on my part, but hey at least I can go surf now.

https://imgur.com/a/auXZTgk

Thanks again.

 

12

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13

And that is how you do that. Nice job. 

It will never be perfect or invisible, but with repairs you shoot for something that blends in so you have to look for it. The ‘regular’ Gorilla Glue does a nice job of mimicking older, sun-browned foam and the ‘clear’ does well for newer stuff. Compared to the PITA that comes when you’re using resin+thixotropics, trying to match color ( i found coffee worked) and sanding, and sanding, and sanding, yeah, it’s a very good way to go. 

A little glue on your shirt is nothing, and welcome to your new ding repair shirt. And eventually it wears off. Unlike the sartorial misery that happens whenever I’m near silicone caulking. Hate that stuff with a passion. 

Glad to be of help

doc…

14

Bumping this thread just because I think Gorilla Glue is cute and a bit of an outlier.

We have Tarzan Grip here (https://www.bunnings.com.au/tarzan-s-grip-250ml-high-strength-glue_p1210339) which seems to be a foaming PU glue.

Anyone else using this or similiar for filling dings? Good, quick option, thanks Doc.

15

Uhm, the Tarzan’s Grip  is pretty much the same as original Gorilla Grip in that it (according to the blurb) goes off a pale brown - which looks good on an older board with a bit of a tan, not so great on a new one. The ‘clear’ gorilla grip goes off as a white foam that’s better for that. But- the Tarzan line doesn’t include a foaming clear glue. 

Now, I looked at the MSDS for the Tarzans Grip- it’s made by/sold by Selleys, which in turn is a division of a bigger paint company. Selleys makes Selleys Aquadhere Durabond, https://www.selleys.com.au/products/adhesives/woodworking-adhesives/selleys-aquadhere-durabond/ which goes off yellow. You might try contacting Selleys ( https://www.selleys.com.au/contact-us/ and a chat window pops up sometimes )  and see what else they might have?

hope that’s of use

doc…

 

16

Cheers Doc, I gave them a call about a few things for various projects. I think we can get Gorilla Glue too.

Interesting materials indeed.

17

Ah? Cool. It’s really nice if the manufacturer will talk to you, the information we pass around is real nice and all, but the source is, well, the source. 

I mentioned the MSDS ( Material Safety Data Sheet) on the Tarzan’s Grip before, a copy of it here. https://2ecffd01e1ab3e9383f0-07db7b9624bbdf022e3b5395236d5cf8.ssl.cf4.rackcdn.com/Product/a2481a8e-1084-4def-b578-4c4050a3d676.pdf - there is a tremendous amount of information in these, who makes it, what its major components are and so forth. And yes, how to use it safely and what to do if you don’t, in extreme detail. 

https://www.gorillatough.com/wp-content/uploads/White-Gorilla-Glue-SDS-Update.pdf is the one for the White Gorilla Glue, which I have mistakenly been calling ‘clear’. 

It’s an interesting world, no? 

doc…