while sanding down the fin plugs tonight, I didn’t notice the back of the disk go right through to the foam. Bummer… anyway, i’ve glassed a patch on and hotcoated over it and will sand it tomorrow. The board was sprayed white so the repaired area will always be obvious. i searched the archives tonight but all the sand throughs I found talked about sanding through to the weave only. What I was looking for was any tips people might have for hiding that repair job. while I’m at it, any tips for feathering the edges of a repair. I always have a bump but I’ve felt some professional repairs and the bump was not nearly so noticeable.
Easy busy bra! After finishing to sand, try some art. Create a mask like fire flames, for instance, and paint all the three plug areas. If you are more engaged with the new trends on fashion, you could try to make those new punk paintings using coloured sprays. Now, if like it white it will be difficult to cover or to hide the wound without call attention to it. Good luck!
The typical fix is to grind back the area, a couple of inches back, all the way around the offending area. The cloth should be sanded away but not the foam; this takes patience and skill. The hole gets filled with a resin/filler combo (Q-cel with white pigment works best) and that gets sanded flush to the foam level. At this point you should have a depressed area at foam-level surrounded by sanded-back cloth.
Note: you can still re-repair what you’ve done, it’s up to you…
Airbrush the repaired area with the color (white) carefully blending into the surrounding depressed area. Try not to paint the sanded cloth. The key here is to use several light coats so they can get dry. Do not sand or wipe the paint as an edge will form to your spot repair and the hiding illusion will be lost.
Now glass the larger depressed area. Hotcoat the area. Sand using a hard sanding block with progressively finer grits. If any weave shows, you will have to re-hotcoat (add styrene to thin out) and sand again.
After reading this, you are probably thinking “what a hassle” but that is how we do it, and it is possible if you want it bad enough. Or, you could paint a daisy on it or something. Or, you could tell your friends that your boards come optionally pre-dinged! then go out and have a blast on it, (which is what really counts) and all will be forgotten. HTH.
As far as that little bump at the edge of repairs: It’s one of the hardest things to really get smooth and looking good to the honest eye.
After doing many of these small repairs, I’ve found a way that works for me. First, when I apply the resin, I feather the edges with a hard squeegee to reduce the bump as much as possible from the start. Then, after the resin gets hard enough to sand, I either file it down as much as possible, or use 80 grit sandpaper with a hard block.
When it starts to get close to flush, I switch to 100 grit and start using circular motions while sanding. Or I use a random orbit sander, whichever works best for the particular repair.
Finer and finer wet-or-dry sandpaper up to 1000 using water. Polish out. Doug