I have a really nice longboard - Bing Elevator - that I have decided to give as a gift to a really good friend. The board is in great shape, but I cleaned it all up, repaired a few totally minor chips in the rails etc… and it looks as good as new…except for a few fairly minor but annoying pressure dings on the underside of the deck. No cracks at all, only visible when looked at from an angle, but I am wondering if anyone can recommend a way to try and fix them. I have heard of using a heat gun, steam, filling in with resin…I just want to make sure I don’t mess them up since they are pretty minor as-is and it would certainly be better to leave them be than to run the risk of messing things up and delaminating the glass or something. Still, I would love to try and remove them if possible.
OK. If they are minor forget about them. But if you absolutly feel you need to do something about them; Sand just the area where the dent is and slightly larger around the perimiter. Maybe 1/2 ". Level the board on your rack and pour just enought laminating resin onto the dent to fill it. Let the puddle of resin flatten. Sand flush with the bottom. Now gloss and finish. No need for glass as the repair is purely cosmetic.
All I have is the no-mix QuickFix stuff - seems to dry clear on minor repairs, but would that volume of resin turn yellow you think? The board is yellow anyway I guess…
In my limited experience, I would leave those pressure dings. They happen. Theres no way around that. I think your friend will be very happy to get a nice longboard in great shape. If you try and mess with them to fix it you could make it worse.
I tried the technique above on a different board and it seemed to work, but the resin is slightly cloudy, and in a gloss-coat finish, it looks pretty obvious - worse than the dent. I think on the Bing I am better off leaving the dents in and just saying forget it, but I am curious about the heat treatment (steam or heat gun). It seems to work for other people, but the risk of delaminating an otherwise perfect glass job seems risky. Would be interested in what any shapers would have to say. I would think a dent in a brand new board would be worth trying to fix, so perhaps they have some secrets
If the board was built with epoxy over an open cell foam (Expanded Polystyrene) blank then heating the board up might reverse minor denting. But your board probably has a conventional closed cell foam (polyurethane) blank and is probably glassed with regular polyester resin. The heat trick works on a raw blank but not on a finished board of that type of construction. There’s no point in heating that combo up.
