After getting caught in a bit of a surprise double-up beachbreak yeasterday, I ended up going for a bit of a ride across the cobbles, as did my poor board. While I was totally fine, I realized with some dismay that my almost brand-new custom board now had some brand new custom dings all along the front foot of the rail, with a nasty crack in the nose as well. Luckily it was not nearly as bad as it could have been, and once I was out of the water I managed to asses the damage and I realized that it only amounted to four nasty glass cracks which although unsightly had not actually opened up into the foam layer, along with two larger dings that had actually penetrated right through to the core as I ascertained by sucking on them. All in all it was pretty bad to look at, but structurally not all that worrisome.
Since the closest surf shop is a about 1200km and a ferry ride away from where I live, I decided to do the job myself, wary of making things worse, but also confident that I could manage what really only amounted to a minor repair. I had a small package of Quick Fix resin along with the glass cloth that comes with it, and so I got down to business. My first step was researching the procedure online, and although there were a few posts here and there, there was nothing specific to Quick Fix that really explained how best to work with the stuff, and so I thought this post might be useful to other folks in the future.
Step 1.
I sanded all around the dings in a circular motion with 100 grit sandpaper enough to roughen the glass. On the nose, where the glass was actually chipped (but not falling apart in big pieces by any stretch) I went extra hard and made sure to flake off anything that was not firmly attached, so this involved a bit more work, and I was careful to remove all the chips, but not sand so hard that I opened up the cracks any further by breaking up the solid edges of the glass.
Step 2. I then cleaned the hell out of the dinged areas with a towel dampened with windex which took off any last remnants of salt or wax or even dirt from my fingers. You don’t need a lot of windex to do this, and I was careful not to get liquid in the cracks. Make sure there are no threads or fibres caught in the glass if it is still rough after you run the towel over it.
Step 3. Using masking tape I taped off several rectangles along the rail and around the nose so as to surround the dings. Some got their own taped-off rectangle, others that were close together got lumped into the same one. I left at least a cm of solid (but sanded rough) glass around each ding.
Step 4. I cut out several pieces of the fibreglass cloth - it helps to leave a bit of a ‘fringe’ around the piece so that it lies better once you cover it in resin. Each piece was large enough to cover the ding with a comfortable margin and most ran almost to the taped-off border. A few minor dings I didn’t even cover with glass, two that had bigger cracks running through them I gave about a cm border, and for the nose I cut two smaller patches to cover the two bad spots where the glass was chipped, and then a larger piece big enough to cover both of the smaller ones with about a cm of overlap for a double layer.
Step 5. I just squeezed out the resin and spread it evenly within the tape for each ding in a nice even layer, making sure to work it well into every nook and cranny and crack. (In retrospect, I would have proabbly gotten slightly better results if the resin had been slightly runnier, but I am not sure what I could have thinned it with). I then laid the glass patches down, pressing them gently into the resin and letting it soak through. I added another dollop of resin on top for good measure and spread it all out nice and even making sure to throughly soak the cloth and remove any air bubbles. I let the board sit out in the sun for a bit, and just as the resin was going from tacky to hard (about 15 minutes) I peeled off the tape. I let the board sit out for another hour and a half, just for good measure since it was sunny and I had the time.
Step. 6 The resin had hardened into nice crystal clear little rectangles! I lay down new rectangles of tape, this time about .5mm on the outside of the resin covered areas and began sanding. The tape protects the ‘good’ glass nearby during the initial stages of sanding during which I went from a 40 grit (very gentle pressure) to a 60 grit sheet, then to an 80 grit sponge and then to a 120 grit sponge. By the time I got to the sponges, the tape was begining to wear down, and when I peeled it off, the ‘good’ glass was unscathed, but the resin had been nicely sanded right down to the edges. To finish up I used a 200 grit sponge with a bit of spit and ‘blended’ the resin into the surrounding glass for a perfect lap, and then finally a pad of steel wool followed by a pad of plastic wool to absolutely smoth it out to a glassy finsih. If you are careful and you take your time, you can get a fantastic finish. Since the board rest of the board had a nice gloss coat, the sanded areas looked a bit dull, and so I did a final polish with a dab of toothpaste and just my fingertips, occasionally wetting the slurry to keep it runny. This works amazingly well. It is also purely aesthetic, since there is no way you need a board that glossy - in fact most non-gloss coat boards have a much crisper lightly sanded finish like you would get with a 120 sponge.
The resin worked perfectly, it dried absolutely crystal clear (whether it will stay this way remains to be seen!), and apart from faint white areas where the glass patches showed through the new resin which didn’t match the surrounding tinted resin (the board was tinted blue), the finish was so smooth that I could only feel the slightest undulations in the rail when I ran my hands over it. With a power sander and a superfine disc and than a longer buff, it would have been 100% flawless instead of just 90% 
Total time from start to finish was maybe 4 hours, including an hour and a half of waiting for the resin to cure. With a dremel or power sander, this would have only been maybe 30 minutes of work.
Quick Fix is cheap, easy to use, and it can produce some really great results for small to medium repairs like this.
-Mark