I have a couple of of older boards that have dings and cracks in the glass. Is it possible to strip the old glass and reapply. Any suggestions?
It is possible to reglass a board, (I’ve done it several times) but it takes patience and some finesse. Basically, you have to sand off the gloss and hotcoats so that you’re just barely seeing the weave of the cloth show through. Remember, when you can see the cloth, you’ve already started to cut through it, so only sand to that point and no further. You’ll need some good lighting on the board to see the weave. I suggest a 500 watt constuction light on a stand so you can move it around. After you’re down to the weave, it’s the same as normal: hotcoat, sand, glosscoat, sand, polish. As far as fixing dings on an old board, somebody else can help you more than me. I haven’t done that much ding repair. Good Luck
Have you ever sanded the board down to the fiberglass and then removed the glass from the foam and applied all new fiberglass?
I just got done restoring a 60’s long board. It wasn’t my intention of reglassing but the delamination and dings were so bad that it was easier to strip it and reglass. So just as mentioned before you sand as much as you can, hot coat glass everything, just shy of the foam. Then you take a dremel tool or a utility knife and start removing the glass in 2 to 3 inch strips the length of the board, pay close attention to the stringers, balsa and redwood is very soft and laminated glass has a nasty habit of ripping chunk of wood out. Dont try to take all the glass off in one big ol’ peice, if you do you’ll rip big ol’ peices of foam, wood and tail blocks off, take your time… So now you have a foam blank. Fill the old dings with light weight drywall compound (kind of neat it comes in calking gun tubes at the Home depot) let dry, rescreen the blank if you like the shape, shoot it with some color or what not and glass. Presto. Lot of work for an old blank, better to just buy a new one, template it and let the kids swap dings with the old one. -Jay