A friend has asked me to laminate a 6 oz deck patch on his 10’ board to prevent heel indentations. He purchased the board used but barely ridden. After two sessions he noticed three nasty heel dings along the deck stringer located just below the board center. His weight has got to be somewhere over 200 and I’m thinking a 2x4 oz patch would be stronger than a single 6 oz , with not much more added weight. Would you agree with this? Also, will either solution affect board flex too much, if I stay away from the rails (No lap)? I've searched this topic, but have only found laminate comparison topics related to new board design and not repairs. Any advice appreciated.
I repaired the three pressure dings that created circular cracks so that they were level with the board surface. But I was wondering how to deal with the more numerous smaller pressure dings. I do want the total result to be level. Thanks for the suggestion Doc.
As a general rule, I’d agree completely with what you’re describing, I usually do it that way myself on things like busted/buckled board repairs and the like. Squeegee the laminations well and so on, makes a light, strong repair that takes hot coat well.
The thing is, though, this is a kinda funny case, where the secondary goal is to fill in some heel dings with clear resin , ideally as invisibly as possible. So, the way I might tackle it is to really do a hack job: wet out the area with resin and a wide brush, apply the smaller piece of cloth and wet it out thick - almost floating it on, then the second layer, wetted out heavy and floaty with the brush too. And a fair amount of resin on top of that. Hackiest of all, use sanding/hot coat resin for it, not lam resin. Any use of the squeegee would be at the edges only, and instead I’d probably just go lightly over it all with a wide ( 50mm or so) cheap white bristle chip brush to wipe away really, really excessive amounts of resin.
The result, hopefully, is a repair/reinforement that might need just a little light sanding to feather/smooth stuff out and a touch of gloss coat to finish and no sign at all of the heel dings. I might want to give it a quick wash with acetone or styrene to deal with the surface wax in the sanding resin and get the gloss to adhere well if I didn’t leave enough resin to lightly sand without getting into the weave of the cloth.
Heh- the joys of doing production-scale ding repair. You discover a lot of shortcuts that in some cases actually turn out a better job. My bad, as my great-nice says, I should have explained better before.
Not to question docs advice but when adding patches or doing repairs I always make the first patch the biggest and subsequent layers smaller. Doing it this way I find allows feathering out real easy without burning through the top layer when sanding. I agree with the 2x 4oz.
Cheers
Rich Www.thirdshade.com
Thanks for the confirmation guys. I like the the larger top layer idea, as I really try to keep my work clean and undetectable. Plus it's functional. I did get a response from the shop where the board was made and he recommended staying with the single 6 oz. I want to do this job only once.
I’ll second Huck’s reccommendation for 4oz. x 2, plus you can make the top layer bigger than the bottom layer- easier to feather out and what little ( if any) effect it’d have on the flex of the board will be minimised. Call it two inches bigger in both dimensions.
I agree, two 4 oz. layers would be stronger than one 6 oz., and adding glass to the deck without wrapping the rails probably won't add any significant rigidity