I bought an old 10’ Waikiki rental a few years ago and left it outside. The plan was/is to strip it and reshape a new board, probably a glider style. Got around to peeling it today and it’s got a lot of water in the foam.
How long should I leave it alone to dry out and what would you recommend for the drying? I just put it away in a covered area. No water can get to it, but it’s also not in the sun.
I bought a really old ten footer with the same intentions. Super heavy and waterlogged. I stripped all the glass and let it sit in my basement/garage for a year. After the year it was totally dry. It might have been dry way earlier than that but I wasnt regularly checking. Unfortunately the foam was outgasing really bad after i shaped the board. Didnt find that out until I tried to hotcoat the board. Disaster!
I had a board that had a two foot by one foot waterlogged area on the deck from a de-lam. I cut the glass away from the spot and put it in the “attic” of my garage, on top of the wall ties but under the rafters. It gets hot but there is air flow. It took about three and a half or four months to evaporate. There was no re-shaping needed, only glass patch. Don’t know if the foam would be softer or not after drying. I’d like to hear about the condition of your foam when it dries.
Waiting months sucks.
The foam will need a lot of shaping, and there’s a few spots where I have to cut out and add new foam. I should be able to get something around 9’ 7" x 22", not sure how thick it will be after I clean it up, but I’m hoping close to 3" at the stringer.
I bought 2 of these boards, and I did one several years ago. The deck foam ended up softer than expected, but I used epoxy resin. I’ll use poly this time, and I can add a wood veneer on the deck. The original glass was so heavy, it was heavier than most of my current boards.
From my experience the best way to dry out the foam is to expose the wet foam to the air. I have seen boards that have sat around for over a year and with out the foam exposed to the air the foam will stay wet for a long time.
Yes hot dry air flow and no direct uv exposition for pu foam.
Thanks guys. I’ll try to keep it away from UV but still get it into a good airflow. I have it indoors now, so that will not be good.
I’ve used a fan, on occasion, to speed the drying process. Works quite well.
Protect from uv with plastic bin bags,l except for the damage
Cut away sections to increase wicking area,
Leave in the sun if you have it,
Apply vacuum seal around the area and seal with blue tak,
Under strong sun it might be dry in less than a week.
In lieu of a proper meter Check moisture with a multimeter; remember to check before you start to Compare
I’ve drilled holes all the way down a longboard to speed it up…
I started winterizing my banana patches/beds by placing piles of leaves over them and covering with black plastic poyethylene plastic – stuff you buy on rolls, pretty sure it was 3 mil. Got pretty hot underneath during winter and worried me in early spring. Switched to white poly the following year – still plenty warm.
One option might be to make a well-ventilated, black poly tent over the board/foam, placed in the sun. The black poly should do a good job of blocking UV while intensifying the heat.
You could make a tent 3.5’ tall by 7’ wide with 10’ wide poly. Taller if the base is narrower.
Just a thought…
Thanks guys
My big concern about leaving foam outside has been carpenter bees. They’ve made a mess of EPS foam and Wiliwili wood I had in an open shaded area outside. I have an open garage and a large shaded area under the house. The bees found foam and wood I had in those areas in the past.
Stoney, I think I’ll use your idea and make a solar kiln big enough for the blank then use it as an epoxy post curing oven after this blank is dry.
If you can find a small roll of 6 mil black poly for a decent price. it should hold up better than 3 mil if you plan to use it several times.
The tent should get the most exposure to sunlight if you run the long axis in a north-south direction.
Thanks Stoney. There’s a spot I can use for a drying/post curing box, but it runs east west. I think it will be OK, because it will get a lot of sun and solar panels here are usually recommended to be set about the same orientation.
East-West should work too. North-South gives equal light exposure to both sides and more tent surface area exposure overall during the day.
Figures below, A is north-south orientation and B would be east-west orientation. They come from a recommendation I made about placement of artificial/constructed reef substrate. The figures are conceptual.
Strip it and put it in the rafters.
High-pressure weather will do wonders.
I love Swaylocks.
A few good hot days in the sun should dry it it out…lay it nice and level and keep an eye on it , so you can turn it over …it make become a bit brown , but it should be dry .
I moved the blank to a partially covered garage. There’s a good breeze blowing right now and the garage will keep the rain from getting on the foam. It doesn’t get terribly hot but there’s excellent airflow. Easiest way to deal with the foam for now. I may be able to mess with it in a month or less. It seemed much dryer than the day I stripped the blank.
There was a long article in a recent Surfers Journal about Randy Rarrick salvaging old boards, worth the photos and read. Once dry, if there’s black rotting or moldy foam you have to remove/replace it. The really brown stuff often turns to dust when you touch it, so obviously you can’t glass over that. If the stringer(s) are rotted sometimes you can use epoxy if it’s confined to isolated areas, otherwise glue in a new one. Lot more work for me than the cost of a new blank.
When I got the boards they were about $40 each. I didn’t want to spend the bucks for a 9’ to 10’ PU blank, so I thought I’d try reshaping these. What I learned from the first one was the glass is really thick and heavy, and wherever there was a small ding they just put some resin so it tended to grab foam when I did the stripping. After the blank is stripped I have to dig out all the spots where the resin has filled in small dings, or the planer hits them and rips a bigger piece out.
I’ve done 2 other boards and they stripped off much better. I was able to get decent boards out of those and the boards were cheap. 2 were about $25 each. I think I left this board outside in the elements too long. Should have left it covered up. This should be the last makeshift blank I’ll do. I have a bunch of rectangular EPS blanks waiting. Just trying to get through all the crappy stuff.
I have a few shots of the blank right after stripping, then I cut out a slightly larger new outline to avoid planing foam I don’t need. Once the blank is cleaned up, I’ll redraw the outline to true it up to what I really want. Probably do a foam stain or a crazy color lam, because this one has discoloration. I went ahead and cleaned it up a little today with extra long sanding blocks, but the bottom is still too wet to work on. Going to let it sit now, and work on other things like some fins I have to finish and cleaning the yard. All the rain we’re getting is making the fauna grow so fast. Just cut grass last weekend and it looks like I didn’t cut it.
