Good day Swaylockians!! Just finished my first board, and this is my first post here. What an amazing community! I’d have been kinda lost without the content on this forum, so huge thanks to everyone that has contributed and helped us newbies out on our first build.
The board in question is a 9’2” longboard, using standard density US Blank PU foam core, and PE resin. The stringer is ¼ inch wide and I believe it’s basswood. 2 layers of 6 oz glass on the deck, and one layer of 6 oz on the bottom, plus another layer of 6 oz. (fin patch) from the tail to about 1 foot in front of the fin box. Did the lamination with a seafoam green tint. The board was finished last weekend. After just two brief surf sessions, tonight I noticed the stringer seems to have swelled right in front of the finbox, causing the edge of fiberglass to break away from the edge of the finbox as you can see in the photo. Some searching in this forum has me convinced this is in fact caused by water getting in there and causing the stringer to swell.
I’m wondering if you more experienced builders agree this looks like a problem caused by the stringer swelling, and if so, what would you recommend for the fix? Since the board is brand new, I’d love to fix in in a way that doesn’t ruin that shiny new look if possible
I’ve read that water can seep along the stringer, so right now the board is resting tail down so that at least gravity will not encourage water to travel any further towards the nose than it already has. While it’s just the first inch or two of the stringer in front of the finbox that’s really raised (seems to be almost ⅛ of an inch) I feel a slight bump along the stringer up to about 8 inches forward of the finbox.
In case it helps here’s some details on the install of the fin box. Before the board got wet, the area in front of the finbox was smooth and flush with the surface of the finbox. The box was installed after the hot coat, using laminating resin mixed with some cabosil and a bit of white pigment, and I also used a piece of 6 oz. glass for reinforcement all around the inside of the finbox hole. The hole for the box was a bit larger than needed due to some routing mistakes, but not too bad. I did not do a glass patch over the finbox (now I wish I had). The gloss coat did bridge the edge where the finbox meets the board surface because I taped off the box so as to just barely cover the slot in the box.
Thanks in advance for any and all comments and help!