Hola,
While attending Bear Salinas Longboard Fest2005 this summer I came trough this longboard at SLASH Surfshop. It was waiting to be fixed after a snap and the shop owner agreed about selling it to me in pieces, quite cheap.
If you’re interested I can take/post some pics of the fixing process. Snaps happen (even on sandwich/epoxy boards, believe me) and any of you can be on this circumstance soon or later.
Specs are: LUFI KID model (9’1" - 21.5")
Anyone interested???
yes please …
it would be a great teaching tool !!!
thanks , Neira !!
ben
Howzit neira, Looks like a really clean break and should be easy to put back together. The best part is there doesn’t seem to be any stripped off glass which always makes for a harder job of repairing and means it has a good glass job.Aloha,Kokua
Kokua,
I guess pics are not good enough to show the nose half has delammed from snap to the very tip. It’s strange, but the sprayed side stripes remained fully glassed while the center clear section cleanly delammed. I’ve always thought the clear areas would improve mechanical bonding between foam and glass, but I was maybe wrong…
-Yesterday I proceeded with the cleaning of the wax (a very though (and unpaid, if you’re on the business) job) and cutting of the loose glass around the snap. Also, sanded rough the old stringer tips, so they won’t touch each other when the 2 pieces will be joined.
-Once done, I choose 2 pieces of wood, approx. 300mm x 70mm x 5mm. I usually find these pieces on the dustbin of the greengroceries, since they are part of the vegetables and fruits boxes they trhow each day.
-I measured the half of the legth of the wood pieces (150mm) and marked it on the old stringer with a pencil(both on nose and tail).
-I use a handsaw or a jigsaw to make a rough cut on each side of the stringer (both on nose and tail=4 cuts) from snap to pencil mark. Do quick and hard cuts so you don’t lift the glass from the foam. Some years before, I used to cut first the glass with a razor blade and the saw the foam for the 4 cuts, but I feel it unnecessary if you do a quick sawing, best from deck(2 layers) to bottom(1 layer).
And here is the nose, quite easier to clean since the deck is almost completely delammed.
Howzit neira, Is the wood for reinforcement? I never use any type of reinforcement when doing broken boards since you lose the flex and the board can rebreak at the end of the wood. When glassing the board I cut the glass so it tapers which lets the board have some flex. Kind of hard to explain,wish I had some pics to show you. But the way I do it seems to keep the board from breaking again, at least in the area that broke first. Aloha,kokua
As Kokua says - additional wood is kind of a pain to do, and I am afraid it accomplishes nothing.
Things you do have to watch out for - squashed foam at the interface: where it got permanently crushed at the break, well, it can make for an abrupt change in the rocker. You may need filler there to get the rocker right. I kinda like gorilla glue of late.
Wrap it in a band of cloth, maybe 100 cm wide, then another twice the width, to give a ‘flex’ in it, so no abrupt changes in strength or in flex. The stringer is just along for the ride…
hope that’s of use
doc…
Hola,
I’ve been using this method for 10 years (approx. 20 boards fixed) and it was never a pain. I use those wood-sandwich just for joining the 2 parts of the board without the need of a rocker and compression jig. I just cut the slots, wet the wood pieces with resin, fit them in the slots of the tail part, put the board vertical, fit the slots of nose part on the waiting wood pieces and align to achieve a proper rocker. Slots are so thin they don’t let the 2 parts move once they are pressed to each other.
Sanding those wood pieces down flush to deck and bottom is very easy. Then fill gaps with urethane foam, then sand, then cover with cloth inlay, then glass and hotcoat as usual.
I have no news about boards fixed this way snapping again around the fixed area.
An example:
Ah…now I get it. Didn’t understand your methods there for a bit… as we say here, ‘light dawns over marblehead’. Must be senility coming earlier than I thought.
And my apologies for anything that may have seemed like criticism: I’ ve seen too many bad jobs that attempted to throw in more stringer(s) and rely less on the glassing. And their craftsmanship and skills were considerably less, such that you would see 10 mm thick ‘stringers’ in 15 mm wide slots which were poured full of resin.
This is ( if the kerfed slots and wood inserts ) are tight enough, an excellent way to go about it, it does indeed save using a jig and does make a nice, neat looking job. I would imagine that the resin serves as a little lubrication to get the wood in, and as it is absorbed by the foam the wood is locked in nice and tight by foam and old stringer, so that the board will hold the rocker while you do everything else.
The nice thing about the cloth inlay is that even if the foam used to fill gaps is a little different color, it doesn’t matter. And the foam is a whole lot easier to deal with than resin-filler mix. And I’d guess it is much easier to lay in cloth, trim to fit with scissors, then saturate with resin to make up the difference between torn-off glass and the glass that stayed in place. Then glassing over all is easier and better.
Do you find that a finer-toothed saw does a better job cutting through the glass? Or would a coarser tooth saw, with wider ‘set’ to the teeth, be better? Just thinking about how compressible the foam is, whether the fine/narrow kerf might be too narrow. Also, would anybody really want to use their nice finish/fine-tooth saw for cutting through fiberglass…
Again, sorry about that, didn’t understand at first…
doc…
Hola Doc,
No apologies were necessary. We all are always giving our opinion, aren’t we? I always say: “opinions don’t need to be apologized, wrong acts do”.
This is the trick:
Doggone it, he draws better than I do too…
Excellent explanation, thanks again
doc…
Hola,
Well, slots on the foam on both sides of the broken stringer done. New twin wood pieces for the sandwich painted with poly resin, fitted in the slots and board pieces pressed together on vertical position. Some light hammer hits for aligning rocker properly and waiting till resin sets.
Next step: filling gaps.
Really interesting thread, cheers.
Hola,
My PU foam can didn’t survive a 6 motns long period of non-activity. When I was ready to fill the gaps with foam it simply didn’t work. I guess foam has got cured inside the valve.
Well, I decided to fill the gap with a mix of polyresin+MEKP+wood dust (which resulted from sanding down the wood “false stringers” flush to deck. Very useful and always available filler. Will use it when necessary again.
Deck side already filled:
Bootom side not filled yet:
…neira, i do this fix with the wood but not showed like you… I put the wood in the middle of the foam…
Well Rev, where the wood is is not important, I think. Mybe it’s better when closer to the stringer since it’s the thicker point.
But I actually cut the slots on both sides of the stringer simply to make sure they will become aligned when joining both parts of the snapped board.
I guess you cut the slot AFTER joining and glueing the 2 parts. Am I right??
…no,I make a hole right side the stringer…just in the middle of the foam…you not see the hole, not see the wood…hard but good
Hola again,
Some steps had gone through these days.
I finally filled all the gaps using a self made poly putty (poly resin+wood dust+foam dust) and sanded them flush to bottom and deck.
If you remember firsts posts, nose piece suffered a severe delam on deck, which left the foam exposed and aprox. 3 or 5mm deeper than the next-to-the-rails still glassed zones. I decided to fill this and other delam zones with poly resin+chopped glass mat, which is quite cheap, instead of the common poly resin+Qcell filler.
Chooed mat glassed over delam areas. It was quite dirty. No problem: we won’t see it when finished.
Note the chooped mat not wet where it overlaps the glassed areas:
Resin cured and mat sanded flush to old glassed areas:
Well, chopped mat glass has been sanded rough over the old glassed areas and a big piece of sandpaper has been applied over the whole area, for removing loosen fibers of the mat and for removing the gloss of the old glassed zones (we want good mechanical bonding).
Then I choose the most awful piece of cloth I have around the wokshop. Then mark with chep tape the area to cover the snap area, trying to match both deck and botton areas (the bigger wins!). The I cut a piece of cloth wide enough to allow a free lap on rails and long enough to cover the cheap tape strips. Then just mix some poly resin and glass the cloth band as usual.
BTW: Once or twice before I was able to cover both deck+bottom with only 1 piece of continuous cloth (glass bottom-turn board deck up-tight cloth over deck-glass deck-free lap on one rail) but I had no time for doing it yesterday.
Cloth band glassed over bottom, dry laps, note the chap tape:
Cloth band glassed over bottom, laps wet and folded. Note partially covered tape at nose edge, and totally covered tape at tail edge:
I had to leave for work, so at night resin had set completely. I tried to do a “late-cut-lap” over a free lap, but failed. It was hard and completely bonded to the deck chopped glass.
Cutting laps on totally set resin was impossible over the rails, since I didn’t use tape (free lap).
But it was easy over the taped areas of the bottom. I used a straigth piece of polycarbonate as guide for the razor blade, which I apllied along the inner edge of the strips of tape. Then just peeled off the cloth and the tape very easy.
Tail tape pulled off (shit!, some cloth+resin overpassed the tape and got bonded to old glass. Some rough sanding will do the job):
Nose tape pulled off:
Ta-da!
Now let’s go for the deck…
Very well thought out methods here.
First, the wood acts to align the pieces and acts as a jig to hold the pieces to the correct rocker.
The foam or cabosil mix fills the crack between pieces, the mat glass fills the depth gap where missing glass and foam were ( and it’s easier than adding layers and layers of cloth, inlaid, to make up for the glass plus a thin layer of foam stuck to the glass ).
The printed fabric covers it up and the cloth over that ties it all together.
I should note that this is the only way of fixing a board that includes wood ‘splints’ that doesn’t pretty much guarantee misalignment of the pieces. Instead, it actually helps align things exactly.
What do I mean by that? Well, think of it this way; how are you going to drill two perfectly aligned holes in the busted, compressed, angled ends? So that they line up perfectly and don’t make the two pieces line up twisted, off-center or mess up the rocker?
I know, if you drill 'em very much oversize, then you can fill the holes with lots of cabosil mix and the ( usually dowels) ‘float’ in that, but… the problems then are that you have to go through making an alignment jig or table, setting the halves on that jig or table and aligning 'em, with the added complication of holes full of goo and dowel to deal with. Usually, things get a little tweaked - and I have sawed apart more than one that was bent or twisted.
Besides which, the wood set in goo in holes in the foam adds virtually zero strength. After all, all that stuff is just floating in foam, well inside the blank where the foam is lightest and softest. Think of a straw in whipped cream.
Neira’s method , on the other hand, eliminates the alignment jig- the tight fit of the wood strips IS the alignment jig. It may add some strength, and it makes getting the two pieces perfectly lined up a virtual certainty.
It may seem like I’m gushing some about this, and it’s true. Any board repair guy who has spent hours trying to line up the pieces of a broken board, setting some sort of jig or platform to hold it there, taking the whole thing apart, applying goo or whatever and then putting it back together before the goo hardens - well, lets say it’s no fun.
This method makes it easy. Got a couple old busted boards in the loft I may have to play with a bit -
doc…
