I’m fixing a really large delam patch - thankful this is my first intro to glassing. For the first time, I’m actually not terribly upset at how it went (although there’s lots of pooling - is that a problem?)
My main question is about the small-ish bubbles that are scattered throughout the glass job - They’re not pinhole bubbles, but they’re not MASSIVE - less than a cm across.
My question is more general - how do I know if it’ll be fine to leave it be, or if it’s better to take a little more time to sort it out early (If I have anything right now it’s time!)
If the answer is fix - I have some artwork under the glass that I want to maintain - what are some minimally invasive strategies that can also get the paintlines to shine through?
I’ve had similar around a logo before. I just spot sanded those areas and re applied some resin then sanded everything back. If it creates a crater you may have to use some cloth as well? They pretty much disappeared for me. I would say in future a bit more of a squeegee to remove excess resin would be helpful.
Is pooling resin a problem? Yes. Yes it is. Do not do that. Squeegee so that the texture of the weave is just barely visible at the surface. Next coat will fill in.
The updated fix for now!: I ended up dremeling out the bits of glass and resin that didn’t adhere to the foam, then sanded, patched with glass, fill, sand, etc.
Thanks! Curious about the technical details: why is the pooling resin a bad thing? (Besides extra unnecessary weight)
Unnecessary weight isn’t enough reason? Ok, well, it looks ugly, it wastes resin, it adds weight without adding strength, it slightly alters the shape, to sand it down to the proper thickness is extra labor with the risk of hitting the weave, in fact it can cause the glass to float a bit in the pooled area, so the glass isn’t laying tight to the blank, so when you try to sand it down you may actually be sanding through the glass before you even get down to the proper thickness in the thicker resin pooled area.
Basically, every step done well lays the groundwork for success in the following step, and pooled resin, while not necessarily an outright disaster, creates problems that are not easily fixed before the next step.
Pretty much all of these things happened and it’s been a journey to minimize the fallout from each step. Huck you’ve seen my latest question already - I’m pretty sure that is all fallout from this botched lam.
For any other noobs reading, I made the mistake of working in the sun (I thought I’d work in the sun and then move it to shade so that the board would cool as the resin sets, hoping to prevent bubbles). The extra heat made the resin kick earlier than I expected, and by extension kicked my butt. I don’t think I would have made it anyway but the resin gelling 3 minutes earlier definitely made the problem worse.
As a noob, I wish I had read somewhere to use the uv cure laminating resin for my first time glassing anything large (and obv out of the sun). Saves the added stress of having the resin go off before being finished, and I could have worked on technique and focused on getting a better lamination.
I’m just glad this isn’t something outright catastrophic, like “if there’s pooling then the glass isn’t touching the foam and so the laminating layer is useless and the board will dissolve in the ocean like that one wizard of oz character” or something like that. Seems like this is not necessarily the case though. Just 5x the remaining timeline and death by 1000 sanded knuckles.
Yes, this is all familiar territory to most of us, me included, i.e. been there done that. Making surfboards isn’t really hard to do, but it is hard to learn, and there is a learning curve for every step of the process. And if you don’t do it all the time, there is a forgetting curve as well as a learning curve, so some things you have to learn over, or be reminded anyway. After 15 years, 2 dozen boards, and boatloads of repairs, I am still just a student of the art. BTW, I see lots of “instructional” videos where they really don’t know as much as they think they do, so its a big boat we’re all in. Welcome aboard.
