Robert August restoration

General Discussion
1

I picked up this old single fin Robert August when I was in jersey about a month ago for $75. I know it will be quite a project to restore. I thought i might have to route out the broken fin in there, but it pulled right out with some vice grips. I’ll just need to pick up another RFC fin and plop it in there.

The main question I had was about the cracks perpendicular to the stringer. I have a feeling I have to put some more glass on but don’t want to mess up the original color too bad. Can i get away with sanding, painting styrene into the cracks and putting a couple layers of resin on top. My other options are sanding down and putting some 4 oz on top, or peeling the existing glass up, sanding, 4oz and put the orig glass back on. I prob won’t ride this board vary often, especially since I just got my new quad from Manny.

Anyone know anything about this board? I have a feeling it is just a popout from the 70’s. I did just finishes fashioning some filler blocks out of balsa for those tail dings since I didn’t have any spare clark foam sitting around. I used the gorilla glue + sanding method that i picked up lurking on the forum sometime in the past month.

Swaylocks rules,

Peace,

Spooner

2
Quote:

I picked up this old single fin Robert August when I was in jersey about a month ago for $75. I know it will be quite a project to restore. I thought i might have to route out the broken fin in there, but it pulled right out with some vice grips. I’ll just need to pick up another RFC fin and plop it in there.

Good price, and you are so far going at it the right way;

Quote:

The main question I had was about the cracks perpendicular to the stringer. I have a feeling I have to put some more glass on but don’t want to mess up the original color too bad. Can i get away with sanding, painting styrene into the cracks and putting a couple layers of resin on top. My other options are sanding down and putting some 4 oz on top, or peeling the existing glass up, sanding, 4oz and put the orig glass back on. 

 Ayeee- don't even think about cutting. Repeat, don't cut. I mean it, put that knife away.  Try the second two, in order.      Chances are it's just a few stress cracks, which happen on long boards. They are ( this may be a rare exception, pictures would help) 95% of the time limited to the gloss and hotcoat and happen when the board flexes more than those two layers of relatively brittle resin can handle. If you don't see the weave of the underlying cloth, some thinned sanding resin followed by wet sanding and polish should do the trick. If you do, sand lightly and reinforce with more cloth.      By the way, that board was glassed originally with 6 oz, not 4, so cutting out the 6 and adding 4 will virtually assure it'll snap right there.      Again, put away that knife. Or saw. Or router. Cutting stuff out is a bad idea 99% of the time.       <div class="bb-quote">Quote:<blockquote class="bb-quote-body">

I prob won’t ride this board vary often, especially since I just got my new quad from Manny.

Anyone know anything about this board? I have a feeling it is just a popout from the 70’s. I did just finishes fashioning some filler blocks out of balsa for those tail dings since I didn’t have any spare clark foam sitting around. I used the gorilla glue + sanding method that i picked up lurking on the forum sometime in the past month.

Earlier RAs were actually somewhat better built than the newest ones are, when RA himself was running the show. One of the better built longboards of the era. Now, if you wanted a little project, fashioning a tail block might be a move. Typically, longboards get set down on their tails too hard, and they help the longevity. hope that’s of use doc…

3

I meant to post the pics last night but they were too big and I had some Halloween parties to get to.

Thanks for the reply Doc. If you can’t tell from the pics, the board is actually 6’10" and has a couple stingers in the back. My friends guessed it was from the late '70s. Unfortunately, I do see the weave of the glass right along the lines of the cracks. What do you think?

I have already fashioned a couple tail blocks of sorts for anywhere that there was missing foam and glass (not in pics yet), and hope that today will get warm enough to work with some resin.



4

Okay…is that all that’s wrong with the tail?

DO NOT CUT! DO NOT PUT IN FOAM BLOCKS!!! DO NOT, DO NOT,DO NOT!!!BAD IDEA!!!DON"T DO IT!!!

These are minor crunches that can and should be fixed with resin and cabosil. Add some crimson or red pigment to it ( I can’t tell which in the pix, they kinda vary. get that at the local paint store where they custom-match your old paint color) . and then it’ll be a pretty close match for the original color and you’ll be able to cover it with clear cloth, and it’ll look fine. That’s fast, it’s easy. And it’s a good job.

Look, you go cutting out foam and putting in new foam, by the time you finish you have added weight, a really ugly-looking job, you will never match the color right and when ya figure in the resin plus cabosil you use to bed the foam in place you have at least as much weight and all. You weaken the board into the bargain.

I mean, no offense meant, but what is it with people, they seem to think cutting stuff out and ripping off the glass is a good idea and with the benefit of nearly 30 years doing dings, I’ll tell you now that it is NEVER a good idea.

Okay - I didn’t mean to go off on you, but put the saw away. Now.

As for the stuff on the bottom, that’s not that bad. You got some crunches, yeah, a few garage dings and such, sand the area lightly, and by that I mean go over it by hand with some 150 grit paper to just roughen it up, clean it off, then what you want to do is basicly regloss it. You will want to fill in those depressions first, do that with clear resin and 6 oz cloth. That way it matches the original color because you didn’t mess with the original color, you left it alone.

You see those bits of rail that are munched up some? Those you want to look at harder. Fill, again with clear resin, then glass over them with 6 oz cloth and clear resin, no pigment needed. Do not go ripping them apart, leave well enough alone.

Now, that is the main thing with both ding repair and especially restoration:

Leave Well Enough Alone!

If it’s still in place, it’ll be okay unless it’s a huge delamination or something.

Look, you have a nice board there, probably late '70s-mid-80s. Don’t go taking a saw to it or ripping stuff apart, you don’t need to and you’ll only make things much worse. Instead, go careful and everything will be fine, and it’s a lot less work into the bargain.

hope that helps

doc…

5

Don’t worry I only used the saw on the balsa to get the general shape right for the missing tip of the tail. I’ll post a pic when I am done, I think you will approve. I do appreciate the advice, especially since I wasn’t looking forward to all the sanding involved in getting another layer of glass to line up to cover all of those stress fractures. Does balsa wet out and stay darker once it is glassed in, or should i stain it to get it to match the crimson a little better?

So, I just finished all of the sanding and i probably won’t get to the actual glassing until next weekend. I know you said to clean up after sanding, but can i wait until i’ve mixed up the resin and then clean with a quick wipe of the styrene? My concern is that with so many dings to cover, some of them small cracks with slight discolorations beneath indicative of water seepage, that I might miss a few once I have the resin mixed up if i don’t have that sanding dust to let me know where each and every crack is.

One more question: when you said to basically regloss it, do you mean to regloss the whole board? or just where the cracks are? and if you do mean the whole board, then i should lightly sand the whole board?

Thanks again for all of your help,

Spoons

6

Okay-

Balsa will look very different, between the wood grain and the way it’ll take up stain or color. Besides which I couldn’t tell you if the resin will make the stain or pigment run or get really uneven. I know for absolute certain that it will take up enough resin that you’ll have unevenness between the old glass and the new glass when you go to cover it.

And then there is another cool thing about balsa. You ever see an old board with a wide balsa stringer that’s turned a dark brown or black and the foam is very brown alongside it, glass delammed all to hell and gone? Well, that comes from a tail ding or nose ding, the balsa got exposed to water and sucked it in like a thirsty camel after the brick treatment. Balsa is what you’d call hydrophilic: it dearly loves water and will take it on whenever it can. It’s like a sponge*. Now, is this what you want to use in spots that tend to get crunched a bit and get leakage?

I’d really suggest that you just use plain old pigmented cabosil and resin mix. These are not great gaping craters here, these are just what I’d call normal crunches. It’s not worth the extra work.

You could hold off on cleaning off the dust, but what I am suggesting is that you redo the whole bottom with a new gloss coat of thinned sanding resin, not going at it crack by crack. Sand the whole bottom lightly as I described before, after you fix the rails and such And if you are doing a gloss, I’d strongly suggest that the board be absolutely dust-free.

You also want to do all the other dings in there first, so you won’t be sanding them and messing up your nice new gloss, especially those on the rails. Those are what I’d worry about.

hope that’s of use

doc…

*green, unseasoned balsa runs from 66% water up. That is, one pound of seasoned balsa has lost a minimum of two pounds of water from when it was cut. That’s a minimum, according to http://www.iswonline.com/wwp/wom/balsa.cfm some of it runs up around 8 pounds of water per 1 pound of seasoned, dried wood. In the presence of water - say an unfixed ding or something, even a pinhole, guess how fast it’ll absorb all that back again.

7

OK, so after many attempts at glossing… sanding and re glossing I almost have this thing almost surfable. I will post some pics soon. I did run into an issue where I tried putting styrene in a few of the bigger cracks befrore glossing. They seemed to out-gas a bit and then delam. I couldn’t find a syringe, so I ended up cutting a slice out of the delams and dumping resin in it. Not real pretty for my first major overhaul, but like I said it is almost surfable.

My final issue is the darn fin box. I have a replacement fin, but the square washer that is in there doesn’t want to come out. The screw that came with the new fin doesn’t have the same threading as the old washer. Is there a trick to taking out and putting in the washers on these old fin boxes? This is my first single fin in years, so I can’t seem to remember how the new ones are set up.

mine is like this:

---------||--------

Isn’t there useually a slanted side to the fin channel so that the washer can be inserted and removed?:

--------/ |--------

Thanks Again,

Spoons

8

Uhmm- there is, sometimes. But here’s an easy way to deal with it - see, there are half-length inserts that will, just barely, go in the slot setup you have, though it does take some fiddling and futzing. Most surf shops have 'em and they call 'em ‘hot tabs’ around here.

but there is an easier way -

Go down to your friendly neighborhood hardware store and get a stainless steel screw in the right length and with the right thread type- it’ll cost you maybe 25 cents. Take the screw that came with the fin with you - chances are that the original screw is fine thread and the new one is coarse thread or vice versa. That will fit what’s in there and you should be pretty much set -

hope that’s of use

doc…

9

Thanks Doc,

The thought did occur to me to get a replacement at the hardware store, but I have had issues in the past with lost or missing hardware that is replaced at a hardware store, that it rusts out pretty fast. I’ll make sure it is stainless this time.

So they actually put the tab in before they glass the fin box in?

10

Well, on some of the old ones, yeah. Leastwise, I have had to use a really narrow tab and a lot of patience - I suspect that was the older, glued together fin boxes, which also had an annoying tendancy to come unglued when you hit something. The new ones are molded in one piece, which makes the |\ type slot necessary.

As for hardware store stuff, yeah, go with the stainless. Bear in mind that no surf company will use anything but the cheeziest cr@p available, so anything from the hardware store will prolly be an improvement.

hope that’s of use

doc…