Took pics of the crack, but they are too bad to post. The board was still in one piece and seemed to be holding rocker, so I planned to wrap cloth around the rails and put a veneer patch on the deck.
I removed pads using a paint scraper, brute force and a craft knife. I was able to recover them. There was a bunch of glue (Selleys Quik Grip which sets like rock) left behind. I scraped some off using a chisel. Bad idea. Gouged the deck.
Cleaned up the remains by soaking a cloth in kero and leaving it on the glue. This softens the glue to a gum for easy removal. Sanded back.
Sanded back the crack and buckled glass. Laid a few strips of 4oz in the depression and a piece about 18" long that wrapped around both rails with a 1" lap.
Cut a rectangle of bamboo veneer and sanded the edges until they were paper thin.
Laid the bamboo on the wetted out cloth. Damn bamboo would not lay flat! Corners kept lifting. “Ahh”, I thought, “some of the lads on Sways use Kling Film instead of vac bagging. That will save me all the trouble of getting the bag out.”
From the picture you can see what’s going wrong. The wrinkles in Kling are gathering excess epoxy to create a nice textured surface. What’s more, the Kling was not strong enough to pull the corners of the veneer down.
Next thing, weight the veneer to get it to stick down (thank goodness epoxy is slow enough to let me work through my mistakes!).
Several weights and a few hours later (with the gas heater full blast in the shed because it’s a winter evening and 4 degrees C outside) and I have a result - a board with a slightly flattened rocker. Dumn sh1t. Why didn’t you use the rocker bed?
The pic shows all the extra snading I gave myself. Too much resin and texture from the Kling. Lessons - get the vac bag out, use release and absorbent fabric to soak up excess resin.
Luckily I recently got myself a proper sander, so was able to end up with a decent result after a few sand throughs (use finer paper lazy bones!).
I gave the deck a filler coat, but not too much, because the pads cover most of the repair, and gave the rails and lap a gloss coat (yet to be sanded back).
Got the board in the water and noticed the flattened rocker which manifested as a faint catch in the front 1/3 rails. I guess I lost about 1/8 to 1/4" rocker because I weighted the board on a flat surface during the repair. Racks would have helped, but I should have used the rocker bed.
Went out and had fun and the board was still light and responsive.
Took a tumble this weekend and snapped the nose (but the veneer held, so the board is still in 1 piece). Massive bruise on my hip where I landed on the board - would definitely have broken a PUPE in two (but the bruise would not be so sore!).
