Ahoy Swaylockians, I know on my last post I said I wouldnt post again so soon but This board i’m working on is giving me lots of issues. It is a PU blank (from an old 60’s longboard I stripped and reshaped) and poly resin. I am having a serious pinhole issues on the bottom hotcoat. There must be hundreds of them. I sanded my hotcoat really good in the hopes that they would sand out but to no avail. I attempted a pigmented resin panel in one area (using sanding resin, not gloss resin) to cover up the pinholes but bubbles/pinholes started forming in the panel. I thought the resin would cover up the pinholes or fill them in. I was wrong. I am guessing that the pinholes in the hotcoat are either contaminated or are still outgasing and are affecting any resin brushed on top of them. I have scoured the archives about this issue and most people say that the gloss coat will simply fill in the pinholes. But after seeing what they did to my panel, I am worried that the glosscoat will become a bubbly mess because of the pinholes in the hotcoat. I am thinking about mixxing some Lam resin thinned with styrene monomer, and squeeggeeing it onto the sanded hotcoat in the hopes that I can press the resin down into the pinholes and that it will stay there. Then hopefully can do my resin panel,pinlines, and then gloss. Is this a good idea or does anyone else have any methods that will deal with this issues? Thanks so much guys. Hope there are waves wherever you may be. Swaylocks ROCKS!
I kept having this issue on a poly board that I did a bunch of work on. Was able to stick a pin right into foam with no restriction, and every time I tried to force epoxy into it, it burped it out like Vesuvius.
My solution was to wait until the epoxy got very thick and then used a razor blade to force it into the holes from every angle, after pulling the board from the sunlight so it was cooling off.
It took a while as I kept finding new holes., and only my heat source was sunlight.
Several years later and many hundreds of waves and I cannot see signs of water intrusion where the pinholes were.
Cool I think I will try that out and see how it goes.
In the interest of future visitors:
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where were you glassing (indoors/outdoors, sealed/not-sealed room, humid part of the world vs dry part of the world)?
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what time of day was it?
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was was the likely temperature & humidity when you were doing the resin panels? It wouldn’t hurt to know what time/temps/humidity likely were when you were lamming & hotcoating before discovering the pinholes.
Beg,buy, or borrow a Saws All. Or a Jig Saw. Cut the surfboard into small chuncks. Throw all of it into the trash…
Start small and slow. Learn how to do ding repair and fin box installs. Learn about chemicals like Polester Resin and Catylist. Learn about Epoxy Resin. When you get good at ding repair you can start charging money for your work. One day you will have enough money to buy a first quality surfboard blank. And the skills you learned with ding repair will be what you need to build an awesome board…but that’s me…not you…
You have a crap blank. You used way too much Cat. You have massive contaminants. Wind , bugs, ect…it’s like a bad dream. Time to wake up.
Batfische, I Lammed the board inside my shop which is pretty clean. I did use UV poly resin in the intererest of time. It was about 70 degrees F out during lam. and I live in New England which can get kind of humid. I noticed pinholes in the bottom lam and did a squeeggee coat with thinned lam resin to fill them in. Then I hotcoated using catalysed sanding resin. I did the resin panels the other day and it was 3:30 in the afternoon and 60 degrees F.
Stingray, I used the 60’s blank because it was too cool to throw out. Triple stringer with an awesome T-band center stringer. I do lots of Poly ding repair and have never had this problem. I also have never had this problem before when building other boards. My friends are always asking me to fix their dings because they know they come out right. This is an experiment in resurrecting an old blank ( that is not deserving of the trash) and I dont let problems discourage me. So thanks for the advice but I think I will keep the board in one piece and figure it out.
SurferO,
Your reclaimed blank may have had some retained moisture, from its former life. You may have shaped too soon after stripping the glass, without allowing a drying period. Whatever the reason for it, you do have a problem. A clear sealer, that is not a problem in the presence of some moisture, would be the call IMO. What comes readily to mind, is cyanoacrylate glue, aka Super Glue. It will wick into the smallest pinholes, and hairline cracks, and dries hard and clear. It sands easily, and should be undetectable, after you gloss. Hope it works for you.
That’s quite possible. Or, given the location, falling ambient temp and increase in humidity during cure.
This time of year in the Northeast, temps can drop 20 degrees in 6 hours.
Yesterday’s high was 66 where I live. At sunrise today it was 33 degrees.
Thats is a great solution. Never thought to use super glue. I will definately try that. Thanks again! I’ve been building this board over the past couple weeks and I think the temp varaibility is kind of an issue. hopefully I can get it all finsihed before some big winter swells!
You win… I know nothing…
Why did you ask a quesion if you know the answer?
Stingray, I was thinking of a whole bunch of reasons why the pinholes might have happened. However, my question was not why did they happen? (although I do appreciate any info in regards to the potential cause of the pinholes) My question was whether or not squueggeeing lam resin into the pinholes would solve the problem or if there were any other techniques that would work better??? Thas was the question that I asked and that I did not know the answer to. Thankfully some Swaylockians gave me contructive, not destructive, advice. I have never used superglue on a surfboard before and was thanking Mr. Thrailkill for telling me that technique. And I have seen some of your boards (profile Picture?) and they look great. You and so many others on Swaylocks know way more than I ever will know about building surfboards. So I know you could have given me better advice than to saw my board in half.