Removing Futures Boxes

General Discussion
1

Hello all,

Anyone willing to shed a little light on the best way to remove a futures box would have a lot of gratitude from me. The long and short of it is that I am an idiot. Somehow I managed to set one of the boxes in a recent shape 1/4" too far forward and I am now left with “uneven” fin placement. “Measure twice - cut once” …apparently not for this fool.

My plan to rectify this disaster is as follows:

  1. Grind down the surronding glass to completely expose the box flange and take some of the glass further out down to just before cuting into the weave.

  2. Realign the Futures aluminim install jig over the incorrectly positioned box. And duct tape it down real solid.

  3. Use the router and bit that came with the install kit to make multiple passes over the glass and fin box (1/16" at a time) to “cut” it all out - making sure to leve plenty of time between each pass as to not heat up an melt the plastic.

  4. Once the box is out I’ll fill the void with a bit of foam, securring it with a resin / foam dust mix.

  5. Remeasure for fin placement - over and over and over and over… Hopefully getting it right this time.

  6. Set the new box and re-glass with the recommened “footballs”

  7. Hotcoat the affected area.

  8. Sand and hopefully save the board.

The only bright spot seems to be that the hull is glassed with an opaue lam and will hopefully mask any cosmetic ugliness. Although I am concerned about the sturctural integrigty of the new box.

Assuming this works well it might be a good way to go about removing a damaged box too.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance for your responses.

2

Jet, 1/4 of an inch is nothing compared to toe-in…why dont you just leave it as it is…you might not notice anything and the board wont look as if had massive surgery.

3

i agree - 1/4’’ is not worth all that work. besides - sometimes mistakes make the magic.

4

First off, 1/4" is a HUGE difference in fin placement. I have been using Lokbox for a while, and moving the fins 1/16 forward or back has a very noticeable effect on how the board works.

Having said that, the fin positioning you have there might work really well for that board. I’d ride it first. If it works well enough, leave it. If not, sounds like your approach would probably work alright.

But you don’t need to fill and rerout the whole thing, if you line it up just right (check your alignment bu lowering the bit until it just touches and moving it as needed), you only need to add 1/4" of rout at the back, and fill 1/4" of rout at the front. Just be very careful of box seating depth, existing countour, and cloth thickness issues during the whole process.