To Splice a Break, or Not to Splice a Break? That is the Question

I know there are some pretty good posts on fixing a break. In fact Doc referred me to this thread which was excellent. http://www.swaylocks.com/…orum.cgi?post=227023

In that post, niera does a great job. Niera’s method includes a splice at the stringer, but he says it’s mainly for alignment purposes and it is visually obvious. I’ve built a jig for alignment so I don’t need the splice for that, and I’m trying to keep it clean so I won’t have to do a solid color wrap. That make niera’s splice less desireable because it shows though the glass.

So, back to the original question. To splice or not to splice? I’ve read posts saying you don’t need to splice a break because the strenth is in the glass. Then I read about board building and people talk about stringers adding strength. If they add strength when the board is built, how can they not reduce strenth when the stringer is broken? At least that’s my logic for the splice.

I’ve got the jig built and the board cleaned up. I’m ready to glue except for the splice. I haven’t cut the space for it yet because I don’t know if I’m going to splice it. I suppose I could splice it just incase. It would only add a couple ounces, but it’s a lot more trouble.

To splice or not to splice? Oh Swaylockians, I appeal to your wisdom.

Here’s the board resting on the jig. It’s not secured into place yet.

Okay, I’m cheating.

I posted on my own post to get it back to the top. The project is stalled while I wait for some feedback, so I’m anxious.

Help.

Okay, I’ll add a bit, based on 20 years plus in the ding biz;

With the single exception of Neira’s method, adding stringer stuff will virtually guarantee a bad alignment both side-side and along the line of the bottom. I have had to cut apart more than one board that somebody used dowels or similar in holes drilled in the foam, and it screwed up the alignment of the two pieces. There is no easy way of making holes in two irregularly broken pieces of foam that will line up in every way.

Making oversize holes, filling 'em full of resin plus thickener goo, adding dowels and sticking 'em together…well, that not only buggers up the alignment but it also makes the board Really, Really Heavy.

Taking a router to the board, carving out channels to set the ‘reinforcements’ in, filling the channels full of goo ( because the router wavered a bit) and then setting in a few sad pieces of wood…makes the board heavy, looks like hell and adds no strength.

That’s right, strength added is zero. You are sticking wood into foam, right? Well, do a little demonstration; a test model.

Consider Irish Coffee: coffee plus irish whiskey plus some whipped cream on top ( a dash of creme de menthe like a resin swirl on top of the whipped cream is optional) plus a couple little narrow straws stuck into the whipped cream, just like the wood pieces stuck into foam. Ok, have one, but before you drink it, do the test.

Grasp the straws firmly, and brace yourself. Using all the strength you have ( which is why I suggest bracing yourself ) - pull the straws through the whipped cream.

Wasn’t real hard, was it?

Nope.

By the same token, sticking wood into foam won’t do jack. Nada. Zero. Wood against soft foam, wayull, the wood crushes the foam and there you are. No strength added. It’s a waste of time.

I have fixed quite a few busted boards with no additional stringer stuff ( and using a jig kinda like you have there ) , just wrapping glass around the board and they were just as strong as they were originally or better. In fact, you have to be careful to feather the edges of the new glass, or else the flex and strength is messed up and the board tends to break right at the edge of your repair.

But there are a few problems with doing it with a jig and no ‘stringer thinger’.

First is alignment. You need to get it aligned in three ways: rocker, twist and side-side. And it’s a pain, you have to set your jig to deal with all of those. And you have to set your jig differently with every board, every break. To hold the damned thing in place, you wind up strapping it in place, and that tension on the strap… yep, out of alignment.

When a board busts, some of the foam is permanently crushed. So if you butter the foam on both sides with goo, set 'em tight, you have a tweaked board, an abrupt change in rocker and usually a twist besides. You also have excess goo, which has to be sanded, and you wind up sanding into the foam, which has to be sanded, which has to be filled, which has to be sanded… Besides which, the goo is a lovely lubricant. So that when you put a little tension on the board to hold it in the jig, the pieces slip out of alignment. Been there, done that, repeatedly. Wasn’t even close to fun.

But the biggest problem is this; your average surfer is a f’ing moron. A halfwit who believes the nonsense that is the ‘common wisdom’ ( an oxymoron in itself) of surfing and that about stringers in particular. And if you are fixing boards for fun and profit, you have to deal with said f’ing morons, who will belabor you with “Duuuude ( zaaap ) , I mean, duuude ( zap zap) , if you don’t put in some gnarly ol’ stringers, it won’t be the strong” and insist on some sort of non-functional stringer thinger.

You have to deal with said morons, in order to get paid for the repair. Which means you have to pander to their idiocy to some extent. That or else educate 'em, and usually they have gone a lifetime without learning a bloody thing…it’s not worth it unless you have a few decades of spare time. Me, I don’t, especially at my age.

Enter Neira’s Really Nice Way of Fixing Busted Boards. If you did a decent job with your hand saw, your side-side alignment is smack on, your alignment with regard to twist is smack on unless you do something really weird, the rocker you adjust by eye when the wood strips are in. The slightly oversized splints in the saw kerfs act as a clamp/jig so that they hold it all in place until the glue goes off, and then a few swipes with a block plane gets it down to where it needs to be.

And it also takes care of the f’ing moron factor.

Now, if you want to keep it from showing ( much) , use basswood, less than 1/8" thick so it’s just barely wider than the handsaw cut/kerf, and don’t even think about using a power saw of any kind. The friction against the foam holds things nicely. You do not need or want anything thicker. This is barely more than veneer thickness, and just about invisible.

It’s a nice white wood, it’s cheap, you can find it in 3" or 4" wide x 24" long x several appropriate thicknesses in hobby shops, it will look a lot like foam and won’t be immediately visible. Compare that to any other way of adding a stringer or something like it, which will frankly all look like hell, add a lot of weight and add zero strength at the expense of a lot of labor.

Don’t even think about using 1/4" plywood or something like that. The key word is ‘thin’.

On that particular board you’ll be doing a yellow glass lamination as an inlay, so that’ll also cover it up pretty well. Then do the rest of your glassing with clear and you’re set.

hope that’s of use

doc…

As to stringer repair not being effective, I think this should be rethought, if the stringers are only tied into the foam thats the truth, but the strength comes from the I-beam effect of having both skins tied to the stringer, so if your splice is tied into the glass it would reinforcethe break, but would not be as good cosmetically, unless you make it artistic somehow

Of use?..YAH!

I appreciate all and any information you give.

Let’s see, I’m no repair expert, but I’m confident that I’m somewhere above a f’ing moron. I suppose that fact that I seek information here supports that claim. I can still use all the help I can get. So thanks for the help.

Of course you know that according to human nature, I’m emotionally invested in my jig. In other words, I made it, so I gotta use it. I’ll point out a couple details that I thought of to try and validate my need to use my creation. I was worried about a few things when I was considering how to build it. Primarily surfboard bottoms aren’t flat, sometimes they have twist, and they’re slick. My solution for these problems came in multiple features.

  1. For each piece of board, use a three point support with the two points supports adjacent to the break and the single point support at the ends. I make the assumption that there is minimal twist within 1 ft of board length. That way as long as both sets of supports are parallel they will align each side of the break on the same plane.

  2. The two points are space as wide as possible and still allow me a good look at the line of the board. That’s about 13" here. By having points instead of a bar, it eliminates the worry of any vee or concave in the bottom. (see pic).

  3. The contacts are dense rubber for grip and stability. I used plumming gasket material from Home Depot. Made sure the points and board are good and clean so they’re good and grippy. As it sits, without restraint, it take a decent push to make it slide. Also, the density is such that it won’t compress under restraint so it won’t change position. My planned restraint is multiple straps of masking tape.

  4. By having four supports that slide fore and aft, I can use the incline to adjust each piece straight up and down, or tip it end to end. I’ve made some trial alignments and it seems to work well for fine tuning the alignment.

The way it seems, I won’t have to use much restraint to hold in down. Then I’ll put some tape along the rails to keep it from opening up as the goo/glue expands.

After all of what you said, I won’t mess with the splices I was talking about. I may use niera’s though for lateral alignment. Now that I think about it, I have some pretty small wood chisles. I could probably take 1/8" off each side of niera’s splices and backfill with Q-cell. That would mask it to look like foam.

I like your recipe for Irish Coffee. I wasn’t planning on installing the splices in foam though. I was going to put them up against the original stringer. That was going to be tough. But since I do a little wood working, I figured it would be like making a mortise for a tenon.

Doc, much thanks for all the advice.

Did I say thanks? Thanks.


Hey, Ryan…

Yeah, I try to be a little more than the aforementioned moron myself. Note that I say ‘try’…

That is a really nice jig, most of mine have been a mite more quick and dirty, using ( for instance ) a couple of shingles together for fine height adjustment and such. Gawd, what a pain it was.

And I think you can still use it, just give a wee slice along either side of the extant stringer with a ripsaw. Or one of those really narrow kerf hermaphrodite saws, with the tooth profile of a Japanese pull saw and the handle of a Western saw. Then, thin basswood and there ya go.

I wouldn’t, though, attack with a narrow chisel ( by the way, if you’ve ever seen a router plane, that’d be the item of choice, something like this: http://www.onlinetoolreviews.com/reviews/veritasrouterplane.htm) . The no-fun part is this: the resin/qcell filler you use on top of it won’t take up resin like foam ( or wood) will, so it’ll look kinda like scar tissue - pale and translucent the way the surrounding stuff isn’t. You could, I suppose, try to attack it with that and inlay some foam, but that’s an awful lot of work.

However, a really white wood like basswood, if it was quite thin strips right alongside the original, I think the contrast between that and the somewhat darker stringer that’s there now ( with dark glue) will be such that the eye will fool itself into thinking it’s all foam. We are, after all, talking a fat 1/16" thick each side, not much more or else you won’t be able to stuff it into the saw kerfs.

In fact, if you have a 10" tablesaw, you can probably make (rip) your strips out of a 4" x 48" piece of pine or poplar. The reason I’d go that long is so that you won’t have any worries about things getting a little hairy when you’re pushing the ends past the blade slot in the table saw insert, y’know?

Then, give it hell with the filler of choice between the halves. Foam would prolly be best.

The no-fun part ( again) of putting a mortise or two alongside the stringer is twofold.

First, like drilling for dowels, it’d be ‘difficult’ to get the alignment right. Paralell to the stringer is good in regard to side-side alignment, but you are likely to run into problems with twist and rocker alignment.

And then if you use the jig to force it into proper alignment, well, the foam might break out where the wood is pushing against the edges of the mortise.

I have to say, the more I think about Neira’s method, the more impressed I am. Does quite a nice job with no drawbacks.

But…it’s a good night for an Irish Coffee, no? Not being all that big on creme de menthe, I just give it a wee bit of cinnamon and maybe a little grated dark chocolate on top, which kinda handles it for me…

enjoy

doc…

Quote:
But the biggest problem is this; your average surfer is a f'ing moron.

chuckle

You’ve been locked up in the shop too long. It’s not so bad out at the beach, Doc! You get to see the guys who don’t bust up their boards all the time. :slight_smile:

Patrick

Good advice all around.

No power tools?! You mean I shouldn’t take my sawsall to that stringer? :wink:

Speaking of niera’s technique, I agree. Not that I’ve repaired a break before, but over the years I’ve talked to a couple repair pro’s in the area. I recall one talking about standing the board on end, basting with cabosil batter, sticking the other end on, lining it up visually, then leaving it to set. The only restraint was the weight and balance of one piece stacked on the other.

That was all I knew when I broke the board. It was a little too freeform and skill intensive for me so I built the jig. Niera’s is nice because it provides enough restraint to hold it still when you want, yet you can still make adjustments until it’s where you want it. Good stuff.

What a keen eye you have to spot my table saw. I happen to have a couple of pieces of poplar and pine laying around. Hmmmm.

I have a general purpose had saw. Sitting here I’d guess it’s a little over 1/16" thick. That’s thin enough for me. I bet if I went any thinner than that I’d have trouble getting glue in the joint.

The router plane was a nice tool I hadn’t see before. I’m not sure how I’ll cut the splices back. My dremel tool can be set up like a router. Maybe. Then there’s the full size plunge router. Too big. What the heck, there’s a bridge to cross after I’ve covered more ground.

Doc, you’ve been a big help. My gears are turning and I think they’re starting to synchronize. I can feel it coming together.

Now the test. I actually have to do it. Oh yah.

Thanks much.

Quote:

No power tools?! You mean I shouldn’t take my sawsall to that stringer? :wink:

uhmmmmm - you could, I guess, if you had a fairly dull blade and a real slow variable speed on it and a lot of time in with one. Might work pretty well, actually - or your handsaw ( measure the width at the teeth, not just the body, and add at least a 16th for how thick to rip your wood ) , or a sawzall blade plus one of those nice handles Milwaukee makes that will hold a sawzall blade…

Sounds like you have a lot of the same toys I have.

Use a lot of glue on the wood slat and I’d flow some in to the saw kerf as well, it also acts as a lubricant for getting the slat in. Glue is cheap, dry joints are not.

And, bouncing ideas around and matching them up with the tools you have and how you can fake it otherwise, that’s the fun of it all.

Off hand, I think I might do the thing with the wood slats, plane down to even with the foam and see how it looks before going on with the dremel or a laminate trimmer and straightedge or something. You may be surprised…

enjoy

doc…

Hola a todos,

I’m with Doc: wood adds nothing for the strength of the final surfboard.

In fact, I ride an EPS 9’2" longboard with no stringer (and no sandwich) and it works great. See it here.

Personally, it’s only at shaping stage when I find a stringer useful: applying force on the planer and feeling your blank bending is not good at all…

If you’re confident about your jig just go for it: peel loosen glass, remove loosen foam, and the most important: SAND or CUT THE STRINGER EDGES so they won’t touch each other when you glue the 2 halves and the jig compress the foam. Use a cheap PU foam can for gluing, it will do the job and will fill the gaps, easy to sand, too. Like Boardlady does here.

Re: Boardlady’s repair.

WHAT?! A BROKEN SURFTECH?! IMPOSSIBLE! IMPOSSIBLE I SAY! THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!

The problem with typing is that it’s not as easy for the reader to sense sarcasm the way you can by hearing a voice or seeing a face. Let me help you. Sense sarcasm.