Basically I’ve got, what I gather is, an epoxy board that was found at the dump. A few years ago I attempted to tidy it up but didnt know what I was doing. Now I want to re glass it properly but need a couple questions before I do it.
Firstly how would I remove the old epoxy from the foam? Do I sand it off or is there an easier technique?
And when i reglass it would it matter if I use polyester instead of epoxy?
I know this is probably obvious stuff to some of you but I’m a beginner and really appreciate learning even the obvious stuff
My guess is way before epoxy surfboards was a common thing by the looks. I’d use expoy just fuzz it doesn’t smell and will work with poly…It’s probably better off to fork up $80 for a new blank and start fresh! Way easier, my $.02 tax free
Yeah, a lot of guys here strip and re-shape old boards and I admire their determination, but it just seems more work than its worth to me. If I had that old board and wanted to keep it, I’d clean it up and paint it to look cool or put a funny saying on it or something, and hang it on the wall in your man cave or shop or garage or whatever. In the movie Chasing Mavericks they had an old surfboard mounted over the garage door, looked pretty cool I thought.
That’s just my 2 cents, you do what you want, wish you the best with it!
I never “restored” an old board. But I did several cut-downs – free foam and shaping practice.
Things to consider for a cut-down:
Original board length, width, thickness and rocker.
New board length, width, thickness and rocker.
When you remove the glass, will there be enough foam and rocker left to build a usable board.
I never stripped any epoxy/glass skins. But to strip polyester/glass skins, I would use a hand saw and cut a small strip of glass and foam from around the entire perimeter of the board. Then I would pull the edge of glass back from the exposed foam edges and peel the skin off both sides. The boards I stripped were fairly large (wide and thick) so preserving foam on the edges was not an issue for me. You might be able to use a grinder to preserve foam by removing just enough glass to expose the foam around the entire board perimeter.
If the board has a lot of pressure dings, is narrow or is fairly thin; you may not have enough useable foam to work with after stripping the skins. After cutting the new shape from the old foam, will you have enough rocker and thickness left? If you have to shape off too much foam from the deck of a polyurethane core, the foam may be to soft to use (density decreases as you move to the center of a PU core). EPS has fairly uniform density throughout.
If you are going to just pitch the board back into the trash, it could not hurt to strip the glass and see what you have left afterwards.
If the core is polyurethane foam, you can use either polyester or epoxy resin for glassing. If the core is expanded polystyrene (EPS), you must use epoxy resin.
Hey Steve, i have done this on a few boards in the past. Not something i’m keen on repeating though! After a lot of labour hours, you’re left with a crappy blank with pulled up foam & soft spots etc. Not saying don’t do it, but in my opinion not worth the time & effort. Buy a decent blank and save yourself some head/heart ache. If you’re determined i would sand through the seam on the rails & try pulling it off in 2 skins! Or a cutting disc, i have a wee grinding disc for my dremmel tool which is great for this. You can also use a small router set to just below the level of glass & put a line on top of stringer, bottom & top and round rails. Poly wont be a problem on your foam if it’s a polyurethane blank! If you have e.p.s, you gotta use epoxy, which is far superior in my opinion… Stay stoked. Aonaibh ri cheile Alba a’ nis
Thank you for your replies. I think your right. A lot of work and it’s not a big thick board so I may just take the epoxy back. Only done a polyester board so epoxy will be new to me. If I was to colour the board before a final coat what paint would I use? I used car spray acrylic in between 2 hot coats on my 1st one and lost a load of the paint. I don’t have a compressor and spray guns yet so quite limited.
Very stoked that you guys are happy to give your knowledge and advice, I’ve definitely got the bug
By the way this is how it ended up when I cleaned it up years ago. White spray paint…
