when patching with fiberglass i see talk about feathering the edges, I’m not sure what this means.
i have a 10" glass on fin that a good sized rock ran in to. Surpisingly only a couple of inch long cracks at the base, but the front edge of the fin needs some work there’s no divots but its been scuffed pretty good. it’s about an inch long. does it need cloth patch or just to be sanded and some resin build up?
when repairing a volan board does it matter what type of glass is used?
Feathering refers to the edge of your fiberglass patch. Usually after you have filled the ding you put a fiberglass patch over the hole. Feathering the glass with a surform, then hot coating with sanding resin will help the lump glass edge between the ding and the board. Once the hot coat is kicked hard, then you can sand this more to “feather” the edge. Once this is smooth and blended, you hit the whole thing with gloss, and then feather / blend in that small transition line. Two things that will help your ding repair: 1) make sure that when you fill the ding hole, make sure that the area being repaired is 1/8 in below finished grade. If you fill the hole and surrounding area 1/8 shy, when you lay the glass over the ding you can lay 2 layers of cloth. 1 that just covers the ding area, then another that covers out beyond the ding about 1/2 in all the way around. Once this kicks off and has been hot coated its really easy to sand it smooth and flush.all you got to do is gloss coat. which brings me to tip 2# its helpful to mark off the area with masking tape. Once the glass has been layed, it good to tape off the effected area, if you don’t use tape a lot of time the ding grows in nature and scope.
On the fin deal, if the fin is still solid, but you want it cosmetically fixed I would run a dremel bit to cut a channel to the effected area. Once thats done i would run a bead of resin in the channel to saturate and fill the crack, this should make the crack go transparent (apply with a small hobby paint brush) once thats done I’d put a small cloth patch over the area for some strength. Hotcoat, sand, gloss, Polish out. If the fin is loose, then you have to cut the fin off and re-rope and glass etc. Not a big deal, but if you don’t want bubbles in the fillet it takes some practice. Fin lead edge chunks I’d just repair the fin with some resin and sand it smooth, or better yet just sand out the dings if they aren’t too deep.
if you repair Volan with Volan you will get a darker patch. I repair everything with 6 oz., goes clear everytime. If were talking about the same board, and taking about feathering, and filling dings…and Volan. Some of the steps change (in my opinion). When I’m repairing a Volan board ding, I fill the dings from the inside out. Obviously weight isn’t an issue, but cosmetics is. So what i do is I try to save as much of the skin as possible, and try to pull the glass back out flat and smooth. I drill small pilot holes in the effected area…I mean small, those little dental drill bits, or the ones guys drill cracked windshields with. I drill an entrance and an exit hole and fill the ding from the inside out with a syringe filled with slightly thinned laminating resin. This stiffens up the crushed foam, and fills up any voids. Make sure you fill it up slow, if you don’t you’ll get tons of air bubbles under the glass. Then I go about fixing the ding as in question #1, ie below grade, cover with glass, etc, etc… Also if you want to blend the ding a bit more, you can hit it ever so lightly with a greenish air brush fade. This helps with the depth perception.
Jay great explanation, that is the way I do it, except I use 4oz. cloth tends to feather out a lot easier. Just double it up like Jay said and it should be just as strong, your just repairing a ding not the whole board.
You can pick up syrenges at a hobby store or I use the ones for basting meat and turkeys, I have a metal one with different size needles for big and small dings, just clean and reuse.
just wanted to say thanks. i have one of those Chicago sander/polishers on the way. whats the best place to pick up the sanding disks and can you use different sized discs? i live i orange county. and thanks again guys
Well, you can use different sized discs, with different sized backing pads and all ( see the ‘making youe own power pads’ thread for good info ) but … I wouldn’t. The reason being that the tool will have a different ‘feel’ to it, and especially with a smaller pad you can do quite a bit of damage quite fast if it gets away from you.
Something I would do ;
Play with it. Get a feel for the persnickety fine use of what’s an industrial-size tool.
If you have some softwood scrap handy, practice sanding contours, draw a pencil line on it and practice sanding just to the line, making a sharp-edged step at the line and nothing past it. Then do a curved line, same deal.
Sand a board ( a wooden one, that is) absolutely flat - and check yourself with a straightedge, side-side.
While this will burn up/clog up a disc or three, it’ll be training you for how to feather out edges, sand flats, sand rails, sand up to a fin, without doing it on an ( expensive) surfboard.