Well I decided to take on a little bit of a
restoration/repair project.The pics
below show some basic dings, plus a delaminated nose/deck that has one of the worst
repair jobs I’ve ever seen and also some serious flex cracks in the gloss coat (and
maybe the glass too?).
The stress cracks are located all along the length of the board. This board is a
clark foam blank laminated with 8 oz cloth (that's what the owner says) 2x top and 1x bottom and polyester
resin.
The goal is to make it watertight and usable, cosmetics not crucial, but I'm going to do the best I can to make it look decent.
Any advise or feedback appreciated on my repair
procedure:
Dings and nose job - cut out nasty repair areas and fill
w/ resin/microballons, shape to form and then glass over, hotcoat sand, etc. - that part I got.
Stress cracks – sand off the hot/gloss coat and
then reapply, either w/o any glass or maybe a 4? oz layer just to help bridge
any breaks in the glass?
Resin type – debating using RR epoxy because I’ve
used it before, or should I invest in a M6000 mask and go poly?Poly would be half the price, plus the cost
of the mask, so it would be about equal.
Any thoughts on matching the repair color to the "old board brown" by
tinting the micro/resin mixture or spray painting?
Thanks!I
feel like the dog that caught the truck! But it will give me a chance to get to
know my new Milwaukee 5540 Sander Polisher (bought of course for polishing my
car ;).
You’re right on the first two parts… we often grind or dremmel out old repairs to re-do them… you could go with a slurry of q-cell and some pigment if you wanted, or you could just chop up another old board and use the foam to replace the large chunks (good to keep weight down).
As for glassing over the stress cracks, you may not need to. Those typically don’t go further than the gloss/sanding coat, just depends how they look once you sand them down. usually a new sanding/gloss coat is enough if the cracks aren’t through the glass
as for matching the color, you can use a bit of yellow or amber resin tint to get it close, but just remember that the foam on the board will continue to brown from UV while the pigmented filler won’t (at least not as noticably)… so regardless of whether or not you get a perfect color match now, in a couple years your foam will have stained more and the repairs will no longer match. So that part is not really necessary unless you want to.
Good luck to you man, looks like quite a project but restorations are always fun!
'Doc' used to post here a lot and always contributed good ideas on repair work. Something he posted several times was along the lines of don't go diving in and try to perform major surgery. A decent disc sander and some coarse sandpaper will likely get you pretty far with prepping. I wouldn't even try to remove the old nose repair... just feather out any high spots and use filler for any low spots. Cap the whole nose repair with some 4 oz cloth/hotcoat and call it good. Same thing on the rail ding. I have my doubts as to how to best deal with those stress cracks. It could be argued that you should grind down the bottom a bit and reglass with a single layer of 4 oz there as well. That method will add some more weight. Once you have all the high spots ground down, the low spots filled and the entire board sanded with 120 grit sandpaper, regloss each side. It's a beater and not worth much more effort than that.
I dont know much about ding repair but I would probably sand the whole board, fill any major holes, glass over any cracks/ filled gaps and then hot coat the whole board again.
That’s a heck of a job you’ve got there. I would sand everything until the weave of the glass just starts to show. Then lay up a layer of 2 oz glass and relam. Use uv poly resin and zip the laps at the rail apex. Now just hot coat and sand to 320 g and you are ready to surf.
Just be sure to sand carefully and not dip into the cloth. This way you will have as strong a board as possible due to the cloth layers being close together. Further you will fully seal all of those cracks. What most likely caused them is over saturation of surfacing agent in the resin of the gloss coat. Dilution causes weak structural adhesion and in this poor boards case a ass load of flex cracks. So go easy on the styrene wax.
As a final note, even when using epoxy you need to wear a respirator. The only exception would be when wet sanding. This is because the particulate is suspended in water not floating in the air. Be cautious not sick
2)Use old foam to repair the large areas and q-cell to attach foam and fill small holes.
3)Skip the added cloth layers simply to cover the cracks and just do a final hot coat of sanding reasin to seal the board… but just before you do the hot coat get some styrene, a cup and a brush and brush the styrene into the stress cracks. Syrene is like water and it soaks into the cracks making them vanish. I would only add more cloth if the stringer showed damage like the board had been buckled.
*** Now hopfully all you’ve don is sand away and re-glass the same amount of material so the board still weighs what it should… in my humble opinion anyway.
PS - Far as I know epoxy rez does not work on a poly board and vise versa.
on further reflection – is that a Robert August board? just seeing a bit of the logo… I might be tempted to sand the heck out of the nose, and then do a fabric inlay with pinlines around it… it would cover up the horrible prior repair, look nice after completion, and its good practice for when you want to do one on a brand new shape…
Hey I got busy and didn’t check back so I got started before I had a chance to read some of your reply (what did you say “don’t jump”…?). So far: Ripped off the nose glass, cut out all the nasty repairs, cut off the nose by about 3", reshaped the nose, filled one of the rails w/ epoxy/mircoballons, up fwd I spliced in a stray piece of foam on the port rail, and also filled all the holes I cut out. Still need to work on the nose rails and top, the stringer is wet on top so I’m gonna wait to finish that area. I’ve also sanded w/ 40, almost to the glass at the stress cracks (love that 5540!). I think the cracks are not through the glass, at least that was the case on a piece I removed. Up at the bow I will need to do a skim coat w/ mb/epoxy to fill in all the gouges. Yeah it looks like I’m going epoxy unless someone has a reason why not too. It’s what I have on hand, and don’t need to learn another system. After finishing all the body work I’ll glass the nose and repair areas, then a gloss coat T&B, finish sand.
John- I had to rip that old glass off, it hurt my eyes to look at it.
Schmidt - I do wear a mask when sanding or working with microballons, just not when working with the RR epoxy resin - but maybe I need to start? Is UV poly easy to work with? Maybe it’s not too late to switch for the glass/hot coat steps?
Billy - I know epoxy will stick to poly, but not sure about the other way. I’m w/ you on 1 and 2 and 3, except if I use epoxy I won’t be able to do the styrene part.
Kieth - It’s a Bill McGuire board, from what my buddy told me he’s a local part time shaper from the Maryland area. I might do the inlay over the new area, that’s a good idea to help blend in the nose, at least on top.
I started with basket cases like your current project........it's a great foundation because in the future you will be shaping and glassing awesome new surfboards. I don't panic when something goes wrong....I learned glassing and repairs first.
A little fabric goes a long way...here's a broken board I scored from Swied...fixed it and traded it to another Sway's member...fun!
Hi Lamsaw. I love wee projects like this! You’re doing a great job, keep @ it. Amongst a couple of other things I’m doing something similar although this LB is not water tight (loads of stress fractures too!) it’s not in the condition that yours is!! Also polyester resin can be used over epoxy. Slanj
Hey Stingray that fabric patch looks great! I too am using the board repair stuff to help me get some chops, always learning (mostly patience). Thanks for the encouragement Spey, I am happy it’s turned out well so far. But this week work reared it’s ugly head and so the board just sat there on the corner, calling out to me every day as I walked by on my way to work… Been reading alot on painting, but not sure just yet. The owner has a design in mind, pretty simple, but 4 colors, so I’m thinking Michaels crafts acrylic paint, thin coats w/ an artist brush (low budget). Plan A is to paint over the sanded fill coat but under the gloss coat? Or on top w/ an acrylic clear coat? Hopefully make some progress this weekend…TGIF.
Always seal your paint in, but there’s a few things to take into account first:
Don’t use solvent-based acrylic paints. It will cause a thin film of resin to not fully cure under the hotcoat - the worst part about this is the layer that does’t cure is the layer that makes contact with the paint, so you loose your bond in those places and it can be a nightmare later down the line. Make sure you use water-based acrylic. And i don’t reccomend brushing because it will create high spots and those will show in your hotcoat. I also don’t reccomend using any kine acrylic clear coat to seal the paint in, for two reasons: First, it has a very cloudy finish and tends to look like sticky residue instead of a finished coat.
I suggest erither getting your hands on some Montana Gold brand rattle-cans or an airbrush rig (if you can) and use that to paint the board. Make sure you prep sand it with 120-180 first and clean the whole surface with a lightly saturated acetone rag. Once dry, paint the board. Then (and I can’t stress this step enough) let the paint dry FULLY for a MINIMUM of 24 hours. Once you’ve managed to keep your hands off it for a whole day, you can finish with your gloss coat/hot coat. Be sure to lay it up super nice too because if you need to sand it you’re going to have to be veeeeery veeerry careful not to sand down into your paint.
Thanks for the feedback Shushka, based on that I think I’m going to dial it back to a single color rattle can, maybe a fade or a taped line so I’m not painting the whole board. Modified KISS principle kicking in here… btw are you saying to paint on the foam or on the sanded glass? Does Montana Gold sell a color called “10 year old faded longboard yellow”?
You can paint on either with the MG cans, works great on foam and on sanding coat sealed with gloss coat. As far as the color match goes, you could always mix paint to get that faded yellow look and airbrush, or do it with resin panels, but I’m a fan of giving the board a complete makeover to cover that old foam (kinda like the photo previously posted in here)
Just be sure to prep well, this is where people usually screw up
Ok, so I was gettin’ busy and then
life steps in like a p.o.’d hockey player and checks me off the rink. But in between work/cars/kids/crisis/and
sometimes even surf (oh baby) I’ve managed to squirrel away some quality board
time. Since my last post I’ve:
1. Re-shaped the nose so it wouldn’t
spear anybody,
2. Spent some serious quality time
with the M5540 learning to sand; sanded down to just above the glass, (I found
the existing fiberglass is really shot),
3. Learned how to do repair delams
(thanks Sways!) and yes I had to go there, it just kept me awake at night
thinking about laminating over that stuff.
There was too much contrast
between old and new, even w/ inlays it would still show at the rails, and I
wanted to keep it original, so I painted the repaired areas to try to blend
them in with the old board. This
presented special challenges; no they don’t make MG spray paint in a “faded old
longboard” color, so I had to think outside the box. I found some “Sand” water based acrylic, and
decided that to match the splotchy faded board color a bad paint job was
good. So my plan was to lay it on and
then sand it back, but I should have just made a light wash (which is what I
ended up doing after sanding most of my first attempt back off). Used a paper plate palate with some white,
sand and blue (a nano drop help recreate the fiberglass color), mixing it up
with an artist brush and varying the shades to try to match the existing. Not exactly the Mona Lisa, but I think I got
close enough.
Next step is to glass it 6 oz top
and 4 oz bottom. Yeah some weight but
there’s not much left of the original glass job (strength wise), plus I need
the practice for my next new board…. To be continued.
