Doing a little ding repair on the rail near the nose of a friends (poly), board.
It seems like as I sand out the damaged crunches, that the glass in this area is so thin the hole just keeps growing and growing. How do you guys get the damaged area cleaned up, and feather the edges around it without sanding through to the foam farther down the rail?
difficult to tell with out seeing a picture.
Generally i use a knife to remove all around the dammage, unles its just a small crack don’t worry if you expose foam. To get a good repair you need to ‘open it up’ then fill the hold with cabo or q-cell then sand that back down and glass over the top.
I’ve done a few repairs on really old boards where the glass was paper thin and bubbling up, in the rails and I think that it probably was sanded too much when it was made. Pull up all the loose thin glass glass, if cosmetics are a worry stick it back down with resin then fill overwise chuck it, sand and glass over ther top leaving a large over lap on to the good glass.
Clean out the damaged glass and foam with a grit barrel in a dremel tool (carefully, minimally). Sand the area around it so the new glass will stick. Fill the void with cabosil + resin about the consistency of spackle. Sand down the filler, redo if needed, sand again, put a layer of 6 oz cloth over it overlapping a couple of inches onto good glass, hotcoat, sand, glosscoat if you want it, sand, polish.
Thanks for the advice guys. I think I must not be explaining the problem clearly.
I’ve got the q-cell and sanding tools down, no problem. the problem is, as I sand, (lightly), around the damaged area the surounding glass seems so thin that any little amount removed below the current deck goes right through to the foam. If I put a patch on without feathering the edges, the result will not be a smooth transition, but a wart on the board. If I sand the wart down to flush, I’m back where I started with a patch that’s to thin to be strong.
How do you pro ding repair guys get this right? Do I just keep feathering that dime sized ding out until I get to some solid glass, even if the repair ends up the size of a pancake? Or should I just go for the stronger, wart on the rail patch?
nurock,
You may have to keep going until you get to good glass. The glass is probably thin at the nose from being oversanded. The sander makes it look good and it gets glossed over and out the door. Thin as paper and dings before it gets out of the store some times. See it all the time on big name boards like CI, Rusty etc.
good luck,
Dave_D
Howzit nurock, You can try using 4 oz glass since all you really need to do is make it water tight. The whole nose is probably thin and the only way to fix that is to reinforce the whole nose area. Should be easy and you just blend the repair somewhere’s around a foot back from the tip.Aloha,Kokua
Thanks Kokua,
That’s the kind of info I was looking for. Wisdom from the masters, one of the truly great things about Swaylock’s.
Move out the repair to a larger area so that you can feather the edges more gradually. You are probably trying to confine it too much, and that’s why there’s a bump. If you take your car into a shop with a 1/2" diameter ding in the door, guess what - the repair area is 1 sq. ft. and they paint the whole door. For boards, a larger more gradually tapered patch is stronger than a hole with a plug in it.
When you extend the repair area, prep with 150 -180 grit by hand. Border tape the area so you know how far to go. Do the filling, sanding, and larger lam. Hotcoat even farther out. To feather, get a paint stick (the free ones at the paint store), wrap it with 180 or 220 (one wrap), and hold flat as possible and feather it to the surrounding glass. Sand from inside the repair outward to the edges, so that you barely touch the surrounding glass. Do not use a rotary sander with thin glass! If you have to use a machine, use a 5" random orbit (with the grits I mentioned) at the slowest speed. If you glosscoat, go out further than the hotcoat. Careful with polishing thin glass, better to clear acrylic spray the repair.
Careful when you ask about pro ding repair advice. “Pro” ding repair only really means that the person makes money doing it. Real professional ding repair is doing it right so that it is virtually invisible, no loss of strength, and backed by a warranty. A high-quality repair shop will have manufacturer’s accounts (or do factory warranty service), and lower-quality ones have mostly direct customers/distributor-type shops. An example is Surftech/Tuflite warranty repair, and they only use the very best professional repair people like the boardlady.com.
Thanks Pete,
Also excellent advice!
nurock, I gotta ask out of curiousity, is your friend’s board one of the imported polys?
Many of them are disasters to work on, and what you describe has happened to me (pretty sure it was a recent “Challenger” brand board, which kills me because I have an original label Challenger circa '67 and it is an awesome, well-constructed board), and I’m pretty deft with the repairs and have a rep for making dings and damages disappear. I HATE working on the imported polys because the glass AND resin is often so thin and brittle.
Hey Hackey,
Nope, this isn’t an import, it’s just OLD. It’s a friends board that I’ve patched a bunch of times, more q-cell than foam at this point. I keep bugging him to get a newer board but… tough economy up here in Tahoe, so we just keep bringing it back from the dead.
Here is a quick video repair. Hopefully can help you https://youtube.com/shorts/MKbkXHT1R0A?si=5U6cFd3JYiWZ3XI0