help with delam on tail area

I’ve got a 4 piece tailpad. It’s got a top, middle, left and right piece. The delam is basically the left piece so I was going to

  1. cut around the left piece

  2. let it dry for a week

  3. pour some resin on, put the cloth on top of that and the old fiberglass piece (with traction pad) I cut out

  4. put a phone book on top of it

Would this be an ok way of doing it, is there a better alternative or tips you’ve got? thx

Oh BTW this time I’m going to leave out the filler as the last time I fixed a delam with filler it don’t think it turned out too good as the fiberglass didn’t bond as well.

Once you remove the section of glass, you’ll probably get a big surpise. Very often the foam itself is loose and flaking away, sometimes real deep. You’ll need to remove the bad foam and fill/shape before glassing. The removed deck section never fits right after that. If the glass over the delam is domed, forget trying to salvage it. Cut it out, clean up the foam, fill, reglass. Don’t compromise doing a proper repair because of a traction pad; remove it and glue it back when you’re done.

If the deck glass is OK, here’s one of Doc’s methods that I’ve used very successfully: Locate a line where you can make a single cut along one edge of the delam area. This could be along the stringer or along a pinline. Make sure it’s as long as the delamed area. Cut it with a diamond wheel in a dremel, or several passes with a blade. Tape both sides of the cut to protect the glass. Tilt the board on a rail so the cut is above the delam. Prop open the cut with small wood wedges. Take a hacksaw blade and run it between the glass and the foam to separate any areas still bonded. Pour catalyzed lam resin (use 1/2% mix) in the cut; it will take a lot so start with 8 oz, and have another uncatalyzed 8 oz ready. Fill it all the way up and use a thin stick to spread the resin inside. Have a 2" wide piece of tape ready to cover the cut. This gets messy: Pull the wedges and cover the cut with the tape quickly. I sandwich the board between C-clamped 2x4’s, just watch the pressure so you don’t blow off the tape. After it cures, pull off all the tapes, sand the cut line, and glass a strip of cloth over it. I’ve done this many times along stringers and the result is invisible.

I can only echo what Pete said -

a few thoughts -

Remove and replace the traction pads, try something with more zip/thickness/rebound to it. Consider, you have a delam, so that means they didn’t work, right?

Attempting to work around the pad - well, look, it’s foam rubber, right? No way are you gonna be able to keep resin out of it. Plus, if you have a delam on one side, you will have a delam elsewhere. Better to rip off the old pads and reinforce the deck throughout the whole tail, so you don’t have to go through all this again, no?

Plus, ask yourself, how can you make the area stronger? After all, it did delam, right? It failed, it wasn’t strong enough. Gotta add more cloth.Adding cloth under original glass- well, you will have a thin layer of foam-and-resin on the underside of the original cloth. Which will mess up your fit, your thickness, etc.

It seems like every horror show ding I see starts with somebody cutting a piece out. Don’t. Going cut-happy is the way to make a simple, straightforward repair into what I would refer to as a Total Freakin’ Nightmare. Don’t. The only exception to that would be a total deck delam that someone was going to redo with a layer of new foam, vaccum bagging, etc. That isn’t called for here. A good analogy is that when they operate on your knee these days, they don’t cut everything open, instead they go in with something small. Result is better work and faster healing.

Filler: cabosil, aerosil, etc…they generally bond Real Well to glass. Suspect a failure in technique before you suspect the filler. Straight resin will look like hell and be somewhat more brittle, in my experience. Done right, filler can be invisible.

Weights rather than clamps - as Pete mentions, a clamping system works better. You have more control of the shape it takes on. Someday I would like to try a vaccum bagging setup on delams, with maybe some thin plexiglass for curve and being able to see what’s happening, but not quite yet. A phone book is maybe the worst - any resin leaks and you will wind up with the Yellow Pages as a permanent part of your board. Wax Paper is good stuff for this, then your clamping system, remove carefully when it starts to gel.

hope that’s of use

doc…

PREVENTION:

This comes from the Professor, not mine originally. When the board is laminated, the laminate assumes the shape of the board’s deck. As the foam gets smashed in, the laminate has memory and still wants to return to it’s original shape, which is the board’s original shape, but the bond between the foam and the laminate keeps it stuck down. Until, that is, the pounding is severe enough that the bond fails, usually helped by water seeping in. Then, the laminate is free to return to it’s original position, resulting in a delamination. The water that seeps in then spreads laterally furthering the damage.

Once I have a good damage pattern on my board, I remove all the wax, and appply a small single 4oz patch over each major dent area, extending the patch about 1.5" around the footwell. I usually use sanding resin, and then just sand the edges of the patch so I don’t get snagged. This new patch tends to hold the lamination in the downward position, reducing it’s propensity to pop back up, and also adds a little reinforcement where needed the most. Weight gain is extrememly minimal.

i have a similar problem with a very large area on the deck (26" x 9") of a beautiful Cooperfish that my neighbor is asking me to make seaworthy. i’m no stranger to delams and repairing them but face a bit of a conundrum with this board as i’d prefer for the owner’s sake to keep the rootbeer swirl finish intact if possible.

normally for smaller repairs, i’d drill a hole in the delammed glass and use a 60cc syringe to fill with lam res followed by weight (plastic bag full of sand to keep contour) and tension straps.

my question is this, since it’s a considerable repair area, could i start at one end and do the repair in sections or would it be wiser to do the entire area at once? also, could someone provide thoughts on advantages to slicing the old glass at the stringer as outlined in a previous post versus drilling and injecting resin. any help is greatly appreciated.

tim

One more thing that might help. Use clean plastic bags of dirt or sand over the wax paper. The bag of sand will conform to the shape of the deck better than a 2x4 clamp set up. Also if the foam isn’t too far crushed, take a heat gun to expand the foam, I’ve gotten it to fill up to 3/8" keep it moving, but if it gets a little brown, just spray it with white acrylic paint

-Jay

The filling and injecting technique never really works well because there’s always an adjacent area(s) that’s either delaminated or about to be. That means more holes; pretty soon they’re everywhere. The slitting method allows you to open the whole thing up and separate the glass from the foam and rebond everything at once. With this method, I strongly recommend using clamps with foam scraps contacting the board and wood battens over them. I’ve repaired delams of the length you’re talking about without any problems, and they’re pretty invisible as well. Note that this method will not work on delaminations that have domed glass from heating effects. Also delams on very lightly glassed boards with overshaped/waterlogged/soft foam aren’t really worth fixing in my opinion. It will just occur again somewhere’s else.

Thanks, PeteC. I appreciate the response and will let you know how it goes.

cheers.

tim