I am restoring a board. Well I have a old Bing I am going to restore but I want to practice on a few of my old beaters first. I sanded down to the first weave of glass can I use resin tints on this process. Keep in mind I am going to polish it out. Or would be better off spraying it?
(here’s an old resinhead post)
I’ve done a few dozen 60’s resto’s for some folks. Here’s my take. If you want a wall hanger quality ie, perfectly flat baby butt smooth heres what I do. Power pad flat with 80 grit, take all the old hot coat off. Fix the dings with the new Herb Baby Diaper Filler trick(HBDF). Re hot coat, then sand it down again with 80,100,150,220. By now all the heal dents, scratches etc will be filled and perfectly flat, some weave will be showing but no problem, they used to wrap those tanks with 4 x 10, 15 or 20 oz. Now you have 2 choices. 1 gloss and polish, showing all the dings and scars and just surf it, or 2 my favorite tape off a 60 color scheme hiding as many dings as possible. Use 3M fine line automotive tape, and paint with any flat acrylic cheap paint, I use Delta, or Apple Barrel from Wal-Mart or Michaels. Spray it on real light with a HVLP of Hobby type sprayer with a double action gravity feed, and use lots of light coats. Let it dry, and re hot coat over the top of it.(I guess you could gloss coat, but I like the extra thickness so I don’t sand through the color). Once it kicks off, sand and polish the hot coat like a gloss coat, yes it will polish out nice. Or you can do the same thing laying down a new color pigmented hoat coat. Lots of the 60 boards way back just pulled the tape on the hot coat and left it as is, bugs, hairs and all. Story: I restored this old Hobie that a buddy of mine found in a trash can. Someone had painted it red to hide a pink resin opaque. It’s nose was split and it had a few rail gashes, but it wasn’t too bad. I tried to talk my buddy into keeping it pink, that went over really well. So I ended up grinding off the color hot coat. When I got down to the clear board it was as bright as the day it was new. 2 inch Balsa stringer, perfect lam etc. Turned out so nice the guys hanging it in his living room, can’t bear to ride it…go figure, a surfboard that can’t be ridden? kinda like a cold beer that you cant have? Not even a sip, go figure
(or you can color your gloss coat, but that my friend is tricky. I would not recommend that, even if this was your 10th resto.)
-Jay