Yeah, they are epoxy…to a degree. A guy brought me his Tuf Lite LB (Yater model) with some minor dings that doesn’t appear to have gone to the core…but it has dinged what probably is the PVC skin. So I’m wondering how the color coat and the PVC accepts polyester resin.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think with sanding the area rough for a good mechanical bond and using UV Poly I should probably be okay? I have a feeling the color coat is probably a sprayed urethane.
Somebody give me the word on this…otherwise I go the epoxy route. The guy doesn’t care about color matches…Just a fix and seal.
hello, i’ve repair alot of them (tuf lites)and if the ding isn’t to the syrofoam you can fix it with poly,5 min.epoxy or suncure…because you are just dealing with d-cell foam and it will take anykind of resin. sand it and paint it…good luck on matching the colors. later, ET soulmanet@yahoo.com
That’s what I pretty much suspected…I used to have a repair shop but never got a Tuf Lite in…just the veneered models which only had 2 oz cloth on the nose and tailblocks and the rest was sprayed urethane…that one was flexed to the point of broken in half but I fixed it with epoxy and some creative inset woodwork.
Luckily I don’t have to color match it or I’d go do the computer match at the auto pant supply store that has a much higher grade paint matching computer than the local Home Depot or Ace Hardware. I figure if I sand with mo finer than 60 to 80 grit, that I’ll have plenty of tooth for the poly to grab on…any finer than that and I always noticed the poly glosses on epoxy sanded boards eventally start chipping off after a year or two.
Thanks for your repsonse…the guy also brought me a Lost with Salomon Technology…another epoxy deal…shortboard…same drill or what?
CBerry…yeah I recall that Iactually did some early ST’s where they supplied me touchup paint way back when…only problem was they kept varying the colors from batch to batch of boards being produced AND the fact that you couldn’t account for fading of boards tht had been out there for awhile…so when I found variance on the little touchup cans they supplied me, I went to the computer match because it could read the color as it actually was…the body shop supply house I went to had an accessible machine that I could bring the whole board in if I didn’t have a chip…but imagine having to walk into a Home Depot with a 9 ft loongboard…they would think you’re nuts and/or kick you out.
You can get away using the same poly resin idea on a superficial Solomon ding as well.
I’ve found that the huge majority of Surftech and Solomon work that I do gets the UV poly treatment. As you suggested, 80g works well for a good bond, then repair as usual and spray over with automotive spraypaint. Unfortunately I don’t have access to a color-matching service near here, so my stock of rattle-cans is steadily taking up more and more space in the shop…
Had two wild cases of ST’s blistering under the primer coat come in lately. Like teenage acne, dimpling up in various spots around the board. When the swelling had gotten past a certain point, the paint and primer had started flaking off. Has anyone else seen a ST with this type of issue? It sure made for a lot of sanding and faring in!
Tanks Jeffrey…alas you have confirmed what my gut was telling me, but it’s easy to confirm going this route with someone that has already traveled the path.
Glad to be of service. The Surftech boards are getting to be a big percentage of my repairs. A lot of guys don’t want to touch them!
Yes, I’ve been working over here for the past eight years now, both shaping and teaching English/translating. Time certainly flies by; everytime I think about how long it’s been I nearly can’t believe it. We set up in a little town called Cestas just outside of Bordeaux, about 30 minutes from the coast. Maybe 50 minutes up to Lacanau and about an hour and a half down to Hossegor. Are you familiar with France?
If you have a minute, check out this link to yesterday afternoon’s session at the south beach in Lacanau. http://www.surf-report.com/modules.php?name=News&new_topic=24 Best waves I’ve had in ages. Made the stories my brother’s been telling me about recent sessions in San Diego seem a little easier to bear.
Yes. My wife flew for TWA for many years then retired shortly after American swallowed them up in 2001. She graduated majoring in French from U of Wisconsin and flew as LOD (Language of Destination) as flight crew working First Class to Paris, Milan, Lisbon, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Rome, etc. but much of it to Paris…400 layovers probably.
Stayed in Paris this year and year before. Took the son to Normandy (WWII buff) so he could see Omaha Beach, the cemetary and some history…he dug it…15 yrs old. at the time…also took him to Auvers Suroise for some provincial France anda fix of Van Gogh.
Although inland, I love Paris…Musee D’Orsay, the Louvre, Catacombs, Tour d’Eiffel, the Seine and river barges, Montemarte, yes…even the sewers is an interesting diversion.
My wife would gladly move to France tomorrow…it’s not perfect, but there are many plusses in how the French and Europeans live in general. America has sold itself out to a very large degree. Every nook and cranny has been scrutinized by corporate America in how to squeeze another 1/2 penney out of 16.7 million Americans to add to their bottom line…it gets tiresome.
Just park me under a palm tree and let my old skin get brown. I’m tired of beilng fleeced and don’t want to race over the cliff with the rest of the lemmings…none of them know what they are in such a hurry to get to anyway.
perhaps the south pacific is for you then!!! i dont think there are any palm trees in france but there are a few in New Caledonia!!! and you’ll be able to get a good coffee and a Baguette!
perhaps the south pacific is for you then!!! i dont think there are any palm trees in france but there are a few in New Caledonia!!! and you’ll be able to get a good coffee and a Baguette!
Cheers Roo.
That could work…just as long as I can take my early morning walk like I do down Rue de Tournelles in The Bastille;
I can’t help you with your Russian, though my wife used to speak it fairly well… I can however attest to the fact that my Spanish has gotten pretty rusty even though we’re not that far from the border. The bi-monthly Popotla trips used to keep it fairly decent but I haven’t been to Baja since '02…
There are certainly worse places to be than where we are at the moment. The most major crime in my town is the occassional bike theft, the kids still think that smoking pot on the weekend is the height of delinquence, and people take time to live live just a little more. Now, I realize that this scenario is pretty exceptional by French standards as well, but it’s a good place to raise kids. Combine that with a decent '96 vintage Medoc, Saturday picnics near some ruin or another, and weekends in Paris to visit friends and with the exception of the missing palm trees life seems pretty good at times!
On the other hand, when thinking of being on the receiving end… though it’s less from the corporate world and more from the administration, it can be pretty hard here financially. You can always get by in France, and your kids will (for the moment) get good health care and decent schooling, but no one is going to make too much money in surfboards (or anything else that mere mortals do). Just getting home to see my family is a real concern (my kids will be back in San Diego for the first time in two years for Spring Break) and we are hardly big spenders. I’ve got an older mini-van to get boards and the family around, my last surf trip was a gift from my brother five years ago, and the new fridge will have to wait "till a few more balsa orders come through. The last year that I worked exclusively board building, my taxation rate topped just over 71% (including retirement, etc. which are all mandatory, just to be fair).
Most shapers do a combination of declared and undeclared work, but that is getting harder to get by with. Changing world.
Nice to hear someone point out a few of the things that I’ve grown to love over here though. Thanks!
Jeffrey…Stu at Ice Nine Foamworks spent years in France and he gives me an equally fair and unbiased view…says vacationing is one thing and living quite another. He feels that the gov’t doesn’t offer any incentive to be an entrepeneur even though the French coined the term about risk takers. Every country has its good and bad points.
New Zealand for example offers a wonderful lifestyle but economically the country seems disadvantaged. The people are great on the whole but the job market isn’t vibrant and much of the infrastructure has been sold off to Austrailian concerns. They have fanatastic affordable education but the graduates are instantly wisked offshore with better offers than what domestic sources can pay them…hence the brain drain continues to be a problem. Their tradesmen are of a very high standard comparable to anyone…esp. electricians.
When I seriously considered moving to NZ (serious enough to buy a house) the education was a focal point because we have a pre college son. To get excellent university training for $4K USD per year is a great deal but there are other developed countries that offer college for “free”.or let’s just say it is factored into the tax structure like France…and Sweden, Egypt, etc.
If you are an entrepeneur or in a business with their structure you may feel stifled and w/out motivation to excel…on the other hand if you want a guaranteed quality of life…or perhaps more correctly stated a ‘promised standard’ of living then this approach may be more to your liking.
I guess it’s as Shakespeare said, “nothing is good nor bad, thinking merely makes it so”.
You seem to have about summed it up. I can’t say that it’s impossible to make a decent living here, but it is a challenge. The educational and health systems do somewhat balance that out, but… having seen both sides I think that despite some shortcomings, the system in California also offers some pretty interesting (though at times somewhat costly) options as well with a lot of liberty to explore different fields and get a terrific general education.
The brain drain is real in a lot of countries. We have several friends who have left after deciding that it just wasn’t worth it professionally to stay here. And we’re not talking about rat-racers, just people who would like to have the possibility to work well for a decent living, with a bit of time to enjoy things on the side. I could rant, but it is simply the system that you choose to live in, and you accept that choice for what it is.
I’ll be interviewing for a couple of positions in Education while I’m in San Diego this Spring, if that gives any indication of where I am currently in the debate. Like many others, I just can’t quite get into the full swing of accepting that at 35, my place in the system is set and irrevocable, regardless of what I’d like to develop for myself.
Summers in France still sound pretty good, though. There are times on a good early season swell, with only two other guys out at your local break and water in the low seventies and you can surf until well past 10pm, when you’re sure that you’ve found paradise…