Need help with repair

i have a bad ding on the bottom of my longboard… the ding is about 5" by 2" on the bottom near the nose with a big crack in the glass going through the middle of the glass. Its sort of caved in around the 3 inch crack (to the foam) with a ton of pressure cracks…i dont wanna screw this one up and i need help bad!

Hi Rightcoaster,

Doc, Resinhead and Kokua seem to have the most advice re repairs. Most follow a similar pattern though.

1 - Prepare the area to be repaired (ie sanding, cutting away crushed bits etc. I have seen Resinhead aka Jay write not to cut away too much. I might cut too much cos the crushed bit often seems to cover a large ding when I do repairs)

2 - fill the dinged area, mix of sanding resin and qcell ( I think this stuff is also called microballoons)

3 - sand again

4 - Laminate a patch of glass over the filled area

5 - Sand again, as close as you can partic around the ridged edges. This makes the finished result better

6 - Hot coat the glassed area

7 - Guess what: sand again, moving to finer grades, then wet and dry etc

I don’t know much compared to others (and they may see this and correct anything I’ve left out), but that’s a basic rundown as I know it. All the best with it.

Howzit bish, sounds right to me except I’d put more than 1 layer of glass over the area. Another thing is I don’t sand the lammed glass before hot coating but I do scrape the edges of the glass with a razor blade to blend the glass to the area around the repair.Aloha,Kokua

What he said, plus I sometimes try to get the filler under the squashed in glass by gently pulling the indented glass away from the foam. Generally it does ok with that, cos the foam got crushed anyhow. Use a new x-acto knife or similar, an old blade will leave un-removable rust marks.

Then, fill behind with cabosil/aerosil and resin goo, sand, glass over, hotcoat, etc as described. If the board has airbrush color, then the small bit of filler shown through the crack/opening in the middle is more acceptable appearance-wise than a glob of filler showing on top of it.

hope that’s of use

doc…

Actually, I have also started using the blade over the glassed area as well - I forgot about it when I wrote the reply to rollercoaster. As for the filling behind the crushed area, I’m going to try and pull apart the glass from the foam and see how I go, Doc. One of my sons’ mates has put a gouge in his board that is about 1/2" wide and about 4’ long (I haven’t made a typo there, it really goes about 2/3 of a 6’4", right along the stringer). If I can fill behind it, a thin white line will look a lot less noticeable that a 1/2" wide one.

Ah … tough call on that one, Bish. You see, if the glass itself isn’t cut or compromised, I try to leave it be, going for strength before looks. That’s when I might try plain filler with glass over it.

One trick, though I’d use it very carefully, is to gently heat the area, if the glass isn’t broken. This can sometimes re-expand the crushed foam ( and it temporarily softens the resin too ) such that you can sometimes get it to come back a lot to the original shape.

The downside to that is that you can start a delamination there, which is, of course, bad news. But you’re no worse off than you’d be if you cut it, opened it and added filler, same process, and maybe the foam would come back a bit and so less filler would be needed.

Heat source? Well, a hair dryer rather than a heat gun, the temperatures are lower so that your chances of ‘cooking it’ past what you want are less.

hope that’s of use

doc…

A question I’ve had while doing the lam is how big to cut the cloth. What I’ve been doing is 1 or 2 pieces that somewhat fit the hole, and 1 piece a bit bigger that goes about 1/2" - 1" over. Is there some sort of formula for it that improves the strength, or is what I’m doing correct?

Jeff

Hi Jeff;

‘collider’ as a handle - guess this’ll be useful info then…

Anywho- I like to cut my cloth so it overlaps, without using an ‘inletted’ layer to fit the ding. An exception to that might be if there has been substantial glass removed during the repair, though even then I’d usually go with filler sanded flush with the original glass and a patch maybe an inch or more ( depends on the size of the ding and the location) overlapping on all sides.

Bigger dings, bigger patches, likewise if it’s on the rails. No particular reason for it, that’s just how I do things.

hope that’s of use

doc…

A great help, thanks!

…And yes, the way I’ve been trashing my boards lately, Collider is extremely applicable. Really it’s just the name of my company, I should probably change it to a more surfy sounding thang…

Jeff

Howzit collider, I do just the opposite, big piece of glass first then progressively smaller pieces of glass to build up the area. Aloha,kokua

ok - that’s interesting… what’s the reasoning behind that?

Jeff