Super duper on the cheap bagging setup. Take one Porsche Cayenne suspension air compressor with a flaky temp sensor (list price like $1,500, but free if you know where to get one that has been replaced under warranty…), an old battery and a battery charger, a trash bag, some masking tape, hose, jelly jar (resin trap!), and you’ve got yourself a setup to bag some balsa to the deck of a Dennis Pang hollow carbon paddleboard! It even works! 
Thats some creative use of materials. Did it work for the whole pull?
I don’t know yet. 
Woo indeed! All right, Patrick!
But, how does it corner?
doc…
I love how the pump is hanging by bungie cords over the board!!!
Rio
Congrats! Looks nice. My own setup is all but done. Just gotta get a bag big enough for 10’ and let my test run finish.
I’ll post it when it’s done too.
-doug
That’s some real advanced tinkering, my friend!
Can’t wait to see what you do next with it. Nice work.
Well, it looks like it all worked out. The balsa is good and stuck to the board. Now I have to feather the edges, fill in between the individual blocks with some epoxy/cabosil/glass bubbles/milled glass fibers, and put some cloth down on top of it to finish the sandwich. I hooked a vacuum gauge up between the resin trap and the pump, and saw a steady 20 inches of mercury. So the garbage bag and masking tape work fine to seal it up.
The pump was hanging by the bungee cords because it vibrates like crazy. The thing would walk right off a table. Hanging from the cords, it doesn’t go anywhere, and it doesn’t transmit its vibration to anything but some air, so it’s not quite as noisy.
OMG!!!
Is that ambient lighting in your workshop?
What a beautiful shop!
That shot could make the cover of Popular Mechanics magazine.
Would you mind if I slept in there?
Brings tears of joy to my eyes…
Nice resourceful vac work there Patrick.
Cheers
Yeah, the shop has really good lighting. I have four spotlights hanging from the rafters, plus a couple of lamps parked on top of some speakers, plus heat, and wireless 'net access. I like it here.
Got a few more steps done. I filled the balsa grid with epoxy/cabosil/microballoons/milled glass to stabilize it, let that set for a little bit while I was cutting out the 10oz E glass to put over the top, mixed up some more resin, wet out the cloth, pulled as much resin off as I could with the squeegee, then put a bag over it and pulled it down again. I made my own perforated sheet with an absolutely enormous roll of polyethylene plastic sheet and an awl. $5 a yard for “vacuum bagging sheet”. Please. Then I used some paper towels for breather material, and used the trash bag and masking tape to seal it up again. I pulled a vacuum on it for about three hours, then shut it all down and hit the sack. It set up fine overnight. Now I have to clean up the edges, mix up some more resin and filler, smooth it out, and I’ll be ready to tackle the other little dings on the board. But as it sits right now, that deck is waaaaaay better than it was. The lifeguards will be able to kneel on it without it feel like it’s going to cave in. It’s nice and solid, and it didn’t add much weight to the board.
Hey Patrick,
Who are you? Mcguyver? that is some nifty stuff going on there. Beautiful balsa work. Are you going to pad it or just leave the balsa showing?
Rio
Nah, not Mcguyver. Just another ding repair guy.
I think the balsa is pretty too, but it’s a town rescue board, so it’s going to be on the beach in the sun all day every day for several summers. After it’s all fixed up, I’m going to paint over everything to keep the epoxy happy, and I’ll stick an EVA pad on the deck too. The next project on this board is to put the fin box back in it. It was held in place with one layer of carbon cloth, no foam backing, nothing tying it to the upper shell… just a layer of carbon. The guys were practicing handoffs for a paddle relay race, and one of them swung the board around and caught some sand with the fin. The carbon cracked all around the box and the box cracked. Then someone tried to put it back together with plumbing putty in hopes it would dry in time for the race, because the Pang was their fastest board… laugh That didn’t work. So, new fin box, and I’ll be finding a way to secure it a little better. I think I’m probably just going to tie the bottom to the deck with some foam, then install it like a fin box in a foam board. The board already has a foam stringer, but it stops right in front of the fin box. rolls eyes
Nah, not Mcguyver. Just another ding repair guy.
Of course, Cape Cod ding repair guys can be rather clever on occasion. (He wrote, smiling)
Very cob-job box repair they did, which figures with that bunch. Though paddleboard fin boxes tend to be put in less well than most feathers are attached to arrows. They bust off at a dirty look. last ones I fixed ( Nauset and the park, i think) I bedded them in cloth, tied ';em in to the bottom glass and called it a good deal.
Oh, and patrick - time for another Beach Break run. I’m buying
best
doc…
Very cob-job box repair they did, which figures with that bunch. Though paddleboard fin boxes tend to be put in less well than most feathers are attached to arrows. They bust off at a dirty look. last ones I fixed (Nauset and the park, i think) I bedded them in cloth, tied 'em in to the bottom glass and called it a good deal.
Well, their race was in like an hour, and the competition was at Harding’s in Chatham. Nobody had their surfboards with them, so nobody had any suncure or 5 minute epoxy or anything like that handy. But you know there were plenty of plumbers there!
I’m pretty sure the fin box is going to stay put this time. I built up a balsa socket/cage around the fin box hole and glassed over the balsa inside to stabilize the skin. Then I scuffed up the finbox and buried it in balsa and tapered the edges that face the cage. And I made a nice little 2 pound density EPS stringer that wedged between the top of the fin box and the bottom of the upper deck skin, and glassed it up. Then it was just like building a ship in a bottle when I put it together. I wetted all the mating surfaces inside with plain old epoxy resin, then put on a nice coat of resin/cabosil/microballoons/milled fibers on each surface, dropped the fin box in the hole and slid it to the rear of the board, dropped the EPS stringer in, fished the fin box up on top of the stringer, and wedged it in place between the stringer and balsa cage. I popped a fin in it, ran a string down from the nose of the board, lined up the box, then held it in place with popsicle sticks and tape. Once that was all good and cured, I filled in around the balsa cage with more filled resin, sanded that flush, then covered the box with a 10 ounce glass patch, then a larger 6 ounce patch. Sanded that smooth, then faired it. Someone’s going to have to drive over the back of the board to knock that box out this time.
Oh, and patrick - time for another Beach Break run. I’m buying
ding ding ding Deal! When?
Patrick
Does it work at Christmas or do you lose your stands then?
Christmas tree stands are cheap, and effective. I’m doing ding repair, not building the Queen Elizabeth. I think I saw somebody else using Pampers containers on a picnic table. Whatever works, man. I save the big bucks for Harbor Freight.
NICE!!!
the intracoastal waterway here is perfect for that…plus the benefit of running into friendly manatees during a paddle.
ps - i guess the xmas stands has caught on
Nice job, guy. Nice indeed…
Quote:Oh, and patrick - time for another Beach Break run. I’m buying
ding ding ding Deal! When?
Uhm- how’s sometime this weekend sound?
