This board has a crease across the bottom, from rail to rail. It’s an older board (a Craigslist find) and I suspect it has no stringer, EPS foam, and a thin glass job. The chances of a successful repair clearly are less than 100%, but it’s my favorite board to surf and for me, it’s worth the effort.
About me: I have intermediate repair skills. I’ve fixed lots rail and tail damage, even replaced a de-lamed deck, but I could never glass a blank from scratch. I started sanding down the crease, trying to feather down the foam, but I chickened out and logged on to Swaylocks instead.
My current plan of attack is to feather down into the crease, pour in the q-cell, and lay down two layers of glass (one skinny, one wyde) across the bottom and well around the rails. (I almost want to just glass on top of old (well-sanded) glass, since the glass in the crease seems to be pretty-well attached. ) My questions are:
Should I use more than two layers of glass on the bottom?
Should I use more than two layers of glass on the rails?
Shoud I overlap the new glass more than 2" to 3" outside the crease? (That's how far I'm planning to go right now.)
Any other special considerations or techniques I might want to keep in mind?
Searching these forums has been really helpful in the past. Any and all good-natured advice is welcome. Thanks, Swaylocks!
You’re on the right track… scuff it up, fill with thickened resin followed by fiberglass belts. I’d make the ‘belts’ 4"-6" wide and feather them out before attempting a color matched spot painting and top coat. I agree - the buckle appears to still be pretty well attached to the foam.
Well personally I would use 2 layers of 4oz over the buckle. It doesn’t look like the deck needs any glass. I would wrap the laps at about 2inches. Personally I would use 2 patches of 4oz over it but I would make my first patch around a foot long in a diamond shape. And the second patch I would make around 6 to 8 inches long and again I would make the glass patch a diamond shape. You will want to make the smaller patch on the bottom with the big patch on top. Glassed at the same time. This is after you prep sand and fill in the bucket. Good luck and keep on posting pics of your progress.
Filling crease with resin slurry will considerably stiffen it, so no need to much glass over. On last repair i had fiber in slurry and just one layer of glass over, seems to work. Repair will change board feel, especially with stringerless build. High probability that link between EPS foam and skin suffer on opposit side and board will crease here.
