hi i have just come into ownership of a very old thruster shortboard. it is in fairly good condition and i think it has alot of potential. i am going to try and repair some inpressions and the foam around the stringer has been compacted down quite alot. my main question to you guy is what and how is the best method of filling in these impressions. i dont really care what it will look like after as i am going to give it a spray job. any help would be great thanks
Unless it’s delaminating, I would just ride it as is. It’s a used board. Just have fun with it.
If it’s delaminating, or if it’s taking in water, I usually just cut a big C in the deck glass, peel it back, clean it out, saturate it with resin, laminate the old glass back down, then put a couple of strips of cloth over the incision. Make sure there are no bubbles. I like to use MEKP catalyzed resin for this job. I use UV cure for surface repairs. This will give you another year or so, for sure.
Don’t worry about smoothing out the deck too much. If you do a few hot coats and sand it down, you won’t improve the performance at all. All you’ll do is add weight.
im not really interested in making the board perform better im more interested in making it look nice to show my mates and look good around the house
i was maybee thinking about using q cell with some resin to fill it up?
OK…then I’d say cheapest and easiest way to do it is to not even open it up. Just sand it all down to the cloth, fix all the dings, then do multiple hotcoats, rough sanding in between…until you have a pretty good surface to paint. Then hotcoat and sand one last time… polish to perfecction.
If the pressure dents are pretty deep, I sand them down to the cloth and then laminate in a lot of little patches of cloth (4 oz is easiest). You don’t really need to keep the weave dry as you’ll just be sanding it down later. Use enough layers so that it’s a bit above the rest of the board. You can use UV resin since it’s on the surface, and it will cure faster and you can surf it sooner. Sand down the fiberglass, hot coat the whole board, sand again, and you’re done. They’re stronger fixes and unlike straight resin, they shouldn’t crack when pressure and flex is applied.
Quote:
im not really interested in making the board perform better im more interested in making it look nice to show my mates and look good around the house
That has got to be the quote of the year so far at Swaylocks. I had to make sure I was reading the sways discussion and not the surfermag one.