Picked up a real nice 9’6" that has the top in good shape but the bottom needs some work. What is the best way to do a semi restore. Can I just do a quick light sanding then re-hotcoat? One of the rails has a small gash I can fill first with resin then do the sanding? What do you guys do to make an old board look good without having to do a complete restoration?
it depends on what needs what where.
a picture is worth a thousand words.
The pictures don’t come out too well. I was considering re-hotcoat for several reasons. It is an older board and the fiberglass will be a little brittle if exposed (which it is in a few spots). I can fix those spots but I just want to be sure it is smooth and clean. It is more the safety of being used than cosmetics.
First, fix all of the dings and rotted/soft spots with filler, cloth, and hotcoat. Sand the entire board with 80 grit (not to deep), and glosscoat, polish. Carefully examine the glass after you sand; is it’s too thin you may need to hotcoat before glossing. If the glass is really bad, lam 4 oz on both sides.
depending on the condition of the glass, you may want to lay up a second layer of cloth on the bottom. the added weight will give it some glide also. add a sways logo while there…
sand the bottom, glass, hotcoat, sand gloss, polish.
Let me just add a little to Pete’s suggestions;
that if you’re in any doubt as to whether the glass is really bad enough to justify adding a layer of 4 oz both sides, then by all means add it. 4 oz goes on really easy, besides which it weighs very little, and it’d be a whole lot of no fun if the board went and snapped on ya after all the work you went and did.
Sanding with 80 - I suspect what Pete means ( and I’d suggest ) is just sand enough to roughen up the old glass, so that new resin ( and cloth, if you need it) will ‘take’ and stay attached. An orbital sander with 80, one slow pass over the area, that’d be my way of doing it.
I’ve done a few old boards with rotted/weathered spots, and if they sand away to nothing or basicly just kinda flake off, add a patch of cloth that laps well onto sound glass with a cloth weight that’s the same as the original: new-ish boards it’s usually 6 oz, mid-'70s through early '80s boards 8 oz might be a better choice and earlier than that it’s 10 oz all the way. Carefully feather the edges when done, if the original lamination had color you can add the appropriate pigment to the lam resin on your patch. This gives you a darker, double pigmented ring around the area, but that’s ‘acceptable’ , ‘making the best of a bad situation’.
hope that’s of use
doc…
Doc;
Do I need to sand off the old gloss coat because of the wax?
I understand why you sand with 80 grit ( I sold abrasives and built furniture as a hobby) and want a rough finish for the lam to adhere to. But am I just getting through the wax in the gloss, or do I need to completely remove it all?
BTW: you are helping with me on two boards, this, and the snap I am going to fix. The snap comes after I fix this one.
Well, because of the wax, yes, both the wax which may be on top of it and the styrene based wax that lets the gloss harden completely… and to give it a rough surface for mechanical bond…
But I don’t think that removing all the gloss is necessary. Fact is, it’s hard if not impossible to discern between gloss and hotcoat when sanding - and getting into the hotcoat risks in turn doing a number on the underlying cloth, which I try to avoid. So, I’d just hit it hard enough to give it a good band of scratches such that the new cloth and resin will stick well and call that good.
That help any?
doc…
That helps a lot, thanks. The bottom has a few dings repaired, I am thinking of adding a layer of 4oz cloth to give it some support, One ding goes into the rail so it would help there too. Problem is then I am into the tops glosscoat. Can I do it eith a cut lap? I haven’t done one yet and I don’t want to messup this board, too nice.
Ahmm- that depends on how well the other dings were repaired.
Now, and no offense meant with this generalisation, what happens with a lot of relative newcomers to ding repair is that they try to do too much, chopping out bits with a router or saw which someone more experienced might do his absolute best to leave alone and work around. Ripping the cloth off a board to ‘restore it’ when ( as Rocket J. Squirrel so wisely said;) ’ Bullwinkle, that trick never works’ . In fact, what might be the easiest sign of a professional repair is how little was done, not how much.
You’ve done some furniture making, no? And furniture repairs? Well, would you replace ( for instance ) all the legs of a table if one had a chip out of it or would you fix the chip? It’s the same deal here.
So, lets take a ‘look’ at what you have here. Basicly, a board with a few bottom dings and a rail ding, right? Not any delamination there, not any serious cracking all the way across the width of the board that goes through both gloss and hotcoat. Some of the old dings have been repaired, no? If they were done right, they have a patch of glass cloth over 'em that laps out past the edges of the filler, onto sound cloth. That, really, is all you need. And, by the way, if they don’t have cloth over 'em, this is when you can put some on.
And do the same with any dings you need to fix now. Try to salvage as much of the old cloth (that may be squashed into the unfixed dings ) as possible, fill behind it so that the original color and such are preserved as much as possible. Sand gently, add a patch of cloth over it, feather, hotcoat and you’re as well off as you’re going to be. This goes for not only dings on the bottom or deck but rail dings as well.
On the other hand, what’s going to be involved with reglassing the whole bottom? Well, sanding the bejeezus out of it, for starters, up over the rail too, then glassing, then hotcoating, sanding and glossing. And every step offers lots of possibilities for messing up and having to redo the whole shebang.
So here’s what I’d do, if I were you. First, get and post some pictures of the board. That will give us a better idea of what you’re dealing with here and we can make some less general and more accurate suggestions before proceeding further. From the sounds of it, it’s really not all that bad, so I think that you’ll be surprised at how little you’ll need to do.
hope that’s of use
doc…