I am restoring a 60’s stepdeck that has seen a fair share of bad repairs and patches but is, in general, in pretty solid shape. I have removed most of the added glass repairs and am redoing them to match color and to be clean. There is a pretty good size gash on the bottom that appears to have been basically filled with resin which is discolored and has cracked. My question is, in some of your expert opinions, what would you do to repair it? The repair looks to be about an inch and a half deep, same width and about 8 inches long…I was planning to dig it out and fill it with cabosil and then match color and glass, but also considered grinding it down, coloring it and glassing it. Any opinions? Weight really isn’t a consideration, it already weighs a ton and it hasn’t been in the water for years so it is dry. I don’t plan on hanging it but will probably surf it on occasion. I already kind of know how I was going to proceed but wanted to see if there were any comments that might change my plans.
If you’re redoing the whole thing anyhow, I’d redo the gash/slice too. You don’t know how good ( or bad ) the adhesion is with the straight resin in there ( that’s what we used for filler back then - cabosil was a rare thing ) but you do know it’s cracked - it’s a lot of work but probably best to get the old resin fill out… The cabosil will be translucent enough that you’ll see some of the resin, so just a little grinding and then filling and glassing is gonna be ugly.
A die grinder or Dremel-type tool is probably the weapon of choice for this, which ever one you’re most comfortable with.
I generally don’t use color in cabosil mix unless I’m trying to match aging foam. The depth of a ding varies, so you get darker and lighter spots in the repair with colored filler unless you use enough to make it opaque, which also shows to disadvantage.
If you get a ding in an area that’s got a lot of color, the way I generally attack it is to fill, sand the filler a little concave, use a layer of light cloth plus color/tint/pigment that just laps onto the original glass, sand , then a larger layer with clear to give it strength. That way, you have a color layer of pretty uniform thickness, no real light or heavy color spots, plus enough strength from the overlying clear lamination.
Doc’s call is right on. I may think about using foam to fill a ding of this size. If the guy had the foam back in those days that is what he would have used. Cut out all of the old resin and lightly glue in a chunk of foam that you have cut to the right size. Sand the foam inlay down just like it was cabosil and reglass doing your color match. I would mix up my resin with the pigment mixed in and remove a little and add MEKP. Put it along with a bit of glass on a piece of foam. After it has dried check it for color match. You can add a little pigment until you get what you want. Keep the mother batch with out MEKP once you get the match that you are after just remove what you need to do a repain and cover the mother batch back up to use for another repair down the line, or to tuch up a sand through. Just make sure you keep it covered and stirr before each use. Good luck.