Shaping room expletives

General Discussion
1

I’m sure everyone has had their share of shaping room disasters. This is my story:

I had just finished shaping a 7’2 minimal, nicely fine sanded… and on the way out the door way, knocked it on the door, and ripped a deep gouge in the foam.

Next 3 seconds of sound out of my mouth were F*****************************K.

After exhausting myself with expletives directed at the board… I came up with a nifty solution to my problem.

As painfull as it was for me to see a gouge in my nice clean smooth rail, it was more horrible to start widening and squaring out the gouge…so nervous and praying that it would end up OK… Here is a pic of the gouge cut out and ready for a foam insert…

Reading the other bits of foam… trying to cut a peice that would fit, sand it smooth to the shape and the contour of the rail… I made a really

great little tool… I cut a peice of balsa off, and super glued a bit of 80 grit to the stick… LOVE that tool… its like a little finger of sand paper… saved my ass!

Finally, after sanding and checking the size and re sanding and trying again, a finally glued a foam insert in… and then sanded it down to match the profile of the rail…

Absolutely stoked with the end result, and with a bit o spray paint the guy wont even be able to see it!!

Have you guys ever ripped little gouges into the foam by dropping tools or other accidents like hitting it on the dam door…

If so, what are your methods to fix the holes/gouges left?

I initially thought of using a mix of resin and q-cell to fill in the hole, but then it would have been impossible to match the resin to the contour of the rail and tape on foam the resin would seep under and all sorts of shit…

Basically I went from totally devastated to back to normal… so im stoked!

Enjoy the gutrenching photos, and heres hoping it doesn’t happen to you guys!

L

“All of the your problems can be solved with a bit of gaffa tape and super glue!”

2

Hey Lavz

Did the same on the Moonrocket and Chip’s mal, the trick is not to glue the whole piece in, just the flat surfaces together keeping the glue from being seen from the outside, that way you dont have the problem of sanding glue lines.

No bumps or lumps that way.

Nice recovery Ant…

3

Hi lavz,

I think everyone has done it. Nice repair. mike

4

I was given a hotwired EPS blank that was damaged when the hotwire broke leaving a deep cut across the middle of the blank. I split the foam in two,flipped the two pieces to move the deepest part of the cut towards the rails and glued up two stringers with a 3 inch band of EPS down the middle. The deepest part of the cut was lost when I templated the board, alot more was lost with the railbands and the remaining I filled with foaming P/U. After spackle and paint it was completely un-noticable.

5
Quote:

Absolutely stoked with the end result, and with a bit o spray paint the guy wont even be able to see it!!

…unless he, too, is a Swaylock’s addict, that is…

Countless accidents in my own shaping room, Lavz. Usually caused by lack of room. Most of them fixed the same way as you did.

6

thats pretty funny a customer came into the store today saying fu*********k about walking out the door and banging a rail on a freshy manicured shape!!!

7

its the woorrsssst feeling…

Your heart just drops as you hear the sound, realise whats happened and then flip it over to see the damage.

Glad to see im not the only unlucky one…

A

8

Lavz, hey. Nice. What did you use for glue?

9

Hey GT.

Super glue mate…

I did some tests on scrap foam, and it didn’t seem to eat away at the foam… so i just put some on the flat inside surface, and not on the sides, for the reasons hicksy mentions…

I’ve since sprayed over, and there is a little bit more paint around the edges of the foam insert, making it a bit visible… but ill see what i can do with some paint over the hot coat maybe … dunno

Cheers

L

10

Lavz,

Have you heard about the hair dryer trick? for small dents with blunt objects, you can carefully heat the area with a hairdryer or heat gun and the gas in the foam will expand, pushing the foam back out.

11

…walked into the shaping room one night, and walked through the dark room toward the light switch on the wall. Knowing exactly where it was I reached out in the total darkness as I walked blindly across the room, and as I did I stepped on something… then heard that “crunch” sound. Somebody left a push broom leaning up against the wall. It was like a cartoon… I stepped on the broom and the handle whipped over and wacked a just finished board that was still on the rack, right in the rail. “SON OF A B*TCH!”

I just turned around and walked out.

I usually cut out the dent to make a small cube-shaped space, then cut out another cube of foam, a hair bigger so it fits in tightly, and only glue the inner surface. Sand and glass.

With the beauty of EPS, small dents or scratches can be filled with “sealer” material.

12

Hey pinhead…

Yeah I’ve tried that actually on other dings etc, small bumps and dents… it didn’t work for me , i dont know what was going on… i touched the foam and it was hot to the touch around the area so…

This was a bit more of a gouge/rip/hole in the board…

Cheers for the suggestions though!

Ant

13

…I never had success with a hair dryer…

14

Hey Lavz,

I’ve experienced several kinds of accidents along my career. Some worst, some not. Cracking noses are what I hate most. But I had a worst experience: I broke a foam into two pieces after clap my hand on it to get rid of some dust. The foam had a rotten section of stringer exactly in the middle. Obviously I made another shape to my client, but I had to make something with the broken one. Sure, I could send it back to the supplier, but I chose not. Instead of it, I brought it from the deadland through some work. First, I squared the two contact surfaces, then glued them just in the stringer using a bonder (I put some drops between the foam sections in order to avoid rails of balancing. After that, I re-shaped it because it lost about 3 inches in the proccess. With the shape ready, I sealed the deck fracture with tape, and prepared some resin with white pigment and microbaloons. I applied it using a squeegue until the section was completely full. The board received an artwork, and went to the normal proccess of laminating and finishing. Guess what? It’s still riding around here even after 5 years and three owners of use.

15

Only time I really was bummed and ran into some problems right after shaping a blank was when I was working on my own board. Lifting it up to feel the rails ran into a wall rack and gave it a really gnarly goyge 4 inches from the tip of the nose. I was pissed.

Ended up Making it a 6’1" instead of 6’3". The widepoints were also pushed up 2 inches haha

Besides that the only time anything like that has happened is I was doing a tint on an egg a kid had brought to me for his first shape. Finally got around to glassing the board. Putting the last bit of resin onto the foam for the swirl design and boom. My resin caked shoes slip on the ground while im leaning forward, board falls off the rack I land on top of it a little. More dirt, scars and uglieness. That one was unfixable. WAY too much time envolved.

16

i was painting a blank, and i was flipping the board and it hit the garage door, denting the rail. I used a heat gun and heated the foam and the dent popped back out.

17

I set down the planer on my last board in the middle of shaping to go answer the phone, when i turned to go in, i tripped over the chord adn dragged the planer across the blank. i ended up with a massive gouge and a smashed up planer. I ended up sanding down the deck to minimize the depth of the gouge, then in filled with spackle, sanded back down then sprayed over with a graphic to hide the dark line on my board.

p.s. I should be back to shaping alot more now that I fixed my house… katrina did a number to it but nothing a little hard work and home depot cant fix.

18

whilst making my 1st stringerless eps board, it came off the racks as i was shaping the rails.

being stringerless, the blank was super-light. i thought i had wedged it in the racks securely, and was pulling the screen up the nose when the tail popped out of the rack, and dropped to the floor, with that ugly clunk/crunch sound. after using every word i could think of, i picked it up to find a 2" long scrape/dent about 1/2" deep about 1/3 up the rail from the tail. of course this was on the side i had just finished.

did someone say this was supposed to have a wing? good thing it was for me, to experiment with the foam, and not an order… was my favourite board for a while, and i ended up selling it too… and they guy loves it! says it is the best baord he ever had. fancy that?!

thank god for small mercies…

19

…From the movie ,“Major League”…

…Given em the heater…

20

Hey Rob,

Once, I read an interview with Maurice Cole in Surfing Magazine in which he says that the reverse “v” was an accident that got right. How many inventions came as a result of a non-intentional or accidental action?