I bucked the nose on this board a few years ago and have never gotten around to fixing it. This was my favorite board for the short time I had it before it got driven into the bottom and buckled on me in two places (actually, three, but the third spot is so small and near the top of the nose that I don’t think it’s worth touching).
The buckle closer to the middle of the board is by far the worst. It’s deep, the glass has cracked open, and it goes from rail to rail. The rails don’t have any actual indents in them, but the glass is cracked a bit on both sides through the rail. The buckle nearest the tip of the nose isn’t as bad, but the glass did open up a bit on half of it. The buckling stops at the rails on that portion. The stringer does not appear to be cracked, and on the bottom of the board there are some stress spider webs in the center of the board near the worst buckle, but the glass and stringer looks fine.
On the worst buckle, I was planning on cutting the glass out about 3" on each side of the crack. I was thinking I could butterfly it out, so it’s narrowest at the stringer, and wider as it gets to the rails. I would remove more glass, but it gets awfully close to the buckle nearer the top of the nose, if I’m going to remove a few inches of glass around that also.
I’m not sure if I’m better off taking off less glass in two sections, or taking off one big section that will cover both of the buckles. I also am not sure how wide to go on the rails. I would think I can go pretty thin and get only the cracks in the rails, but am not sure.
I would then fill the damanged foam areas in with Q-Cell, lay a couple inch strip of 4oz fiberglass over the filled in crack(s), lay another larger sheet that covers the cracks and the area that I removed glass from, overlapping the existing glass by a few inches, and then laying a larger sheet that goes over all of that and overlaps with the existing glass by quite a bit (so, 3 sheets of 4oz glass in total, with the final top sheet likely being mostly sanded away in the end).
For the rails, I was thinking I’m best off keeping the repair area smaller and put a piece of fiberglass in that covers only the foam, then 2 additional pieces that increase in size to overlap the existing rail glass.
Sound like a plan, or too much? I’m open to ideas and any input.
I really like this board, but it’s not the end of the world if it looks like crap. My main concern is that the repair is strong. I also understand it probably won’t surf the same, but that’s OK too. It’s a 6’0 Bing Dharma quad. Highly recommend if anyone was thinking of getting one.
Also, I’m not entirely sure on what to buy to get all of the materials I’ll need for this. Any recommendations on that are greatly appreciated as well. I was looking at the Foam EZ ‘Super Deluxe Ding Repair Kit Large’ but am not sure if that’s enough fiberglass or resin, or even if I can use only sanding reson on this or if I need something else too.
Edit: Thanks doc, that’s extremely helpful! I can’t reply to your post, so I’ll edit here. I have 2 yards of 4oz cloth, so I’ll have to double that up to get to 8oz. I ordered a pint of laminating resin and a pint of sanding resin, plus some catalyst and q-cell. I can use some of the extra for a few smaller repairs I have to make on other boards as well. Interesting - so you think it’s better to push the q-cell and resin mixture into the cracks vs removing the broken/de-laminated glass? That does sound a lot easier. I’m also surprised you think it’s best to glass the entire nose like that, but if you think it’s the way to go, it’s better input than my zero experience input. I’ve only ever had to fix small dings and replaced a section of delam once. Thanks again for the input. And yeah, no need for pigment or anything - I’m going for strength/quality of the repair vs. looks. I’ll be sure to post result pictures when I get to doing the repair some time over the next couple weeks.