I am trying to fix my rawson fish surftech. I cracked the rail and a bit of the deck using it for kitesurfing. I ground out through the deck laminate, the divinycell and a bit of the cracked inner laminate. Now I want to replace everything.
The thing is, the glass inside looks way lighter than 4oz. There appears to be one inner layer of glass, then the divinycell or whatever it is, then two layers of outer glass.
I have already shaped and heat formed a scrap of corecell foam to fit the hole, but I would like to use similar glass so I do not have a hard spot in the repair area. Of course I don’t want a soft spot either. What should I use -what did surftech use in the first place?
I repaired a GSI longboard, and I just bevelled the edges of the laminate around the patch, and layed up several layers of glass, then sanded everything flush - seems to be holding up just fine. I think surftech and the likes are proprietary - secret sauce and all that, not sure if their laminate schedule is even available to minions like us.
I wouldn’t hesitate to just use 4oz inside, PVC foam, and 4oz outside. Feather the PVC foam before laminating the outer layer of cloth. If need be, use more than one layer on the outside. If possible, use a vacuum pump and film to help attach the PVC over the ding.
The scary thing about their ‘proprietary’ laminating schedule is how skimpy it really is. On the Wood veneer with the ‘structural veneer’ layer, there is little if any outer glass depending on who you talk to. On the one I had, I did a repair and didn’t find any cloth at all outside the veneer. The resin bead along the tail edge was pretty thick and brittle, began cracking up and sucking water with absolutely NO impact of any sort against ANYTHING. Even the TufLite has a lot of bondo and primer on the outside but not a hell of a lot of cloth.
If you need some 2oz for the inner layer to ease your mind, send me a PM and I’ll mail you some for free. I’ll mail you some 4oz too if you need.
I have some 2.1 oz glass scraps that I was using for the surface layer on some kiteboards I built with stitched biaxial. I think I’ll try using that. The thing is that once the glass gets smaller than 4 oz it is hard to tell if it’s 2 oz, 2.5 oz 1.5 oz or what.
I will vacuum bag the inner glass and foam, then sand to fair it in, then hand laminate the outer glass.
I think I will relegate this board to “no jumping” status. The other surf techs I have owned lasted a year or so before breaking but this one only lasted about 4 sessions. It’s a big wide board so when I land hard it stops quick. There are several shallow heel dents in other areas of the board already.
I wish I could zip the deck off, throw down a layer of 9oz biaxial , vacuum the deck back on and put a bit more glass on top but that is a huge can of worms to open.
I did follow boardlady.com. The PVC foam and inner glass were both cracked, so I did grind them out and then vacuum bagged the replacements using kwick kick. It was only about a three by six inch area. I did not find any staples but I have seen pictures.
Would putting a four or six ounce patch over the whole deck help improve durability for jumping? I have a feeling the thin inner glass is the weak link. Then again I might try it the next time I break that board.