Looking for Ding / Fin Repair Advice

Greetings All,

New Member here. I’ve only been fixing my own dings for a few months now. I did my first fin repair yesterday and I noticed that the side fin I glassed on is a few mm closer to the tail than the other side fin. 

 

it’s off by such a small amount that I honestly don’t know if it’s worth starting over again or should I let it go? The angle and toe in is correct. Aft is what’s off by few mm.

thanks much!

 

 

 

I think you’re OK to ignore it.       Kelly Slater might feel the difference, but you won’t.      Nor would I.      Go surfing, and have some fun.

I don’t surf anything more than overhead lately here in Florida so I’m sure you’re right, but I had to ask. Thanks my dude.

That’s a pretty nice looking repair if you’ve only been doing it for a few months. You’re not done sanding it yet, are you?

Also, that tail repair looks okay. You’ll find using resin or resin/glass to fill gaps to be a big pain in the butt. Look into cabosil, q cel, flour, etc. to thicken it up. 

 

Thanks man, I appreciate tha. I actually just finished sanding it. I did use qcell for the fin. Repaired the nose and tail as well and that’s about to get glassed, as well as some rail dings.



Thats pretty damn clean for someone thats new to ding repair.

I agree with everone above, Kelly would tell you that something’s wrong with the board, but us 99% of surfing mortals wouldnt feel anything. I had a fish with a 6 inch secton of rail that was caved in from knee dropping on it during a wipe out and with 1/3 of a skeg broken off from riding it into some rocks and it worked just fine. That board was my daily driver in that condition until it all but disintegrated from the frequent encounters with rocks.

Don’t sweat the small stuff with ding repair, especially if the board is something that you actually ride. The more ding repair that I do the more I care about a stronglong lasting repair and theless i care about how clean/perfect it comes out.

Thanks man! I appreciate the encouraging words. I have a few updated pics with all the dings glassed. I tried color matching, looks awful. Turns out thsts trickier than the actual repairs. the only thing left to be done is the hotcoat, but I took out and it rides perfectly, pretty much like when it was new.

 



Color matching ‘suntanned’ boards is a pain, no doubt about it. But there is a way -

See, one time I was in a rush to finish a couple repairs, but out of paper cups to mix resin in. Scored a used paper coffee cup out of the trash, my boss back then drank and still drinks his coffee black and there was just a little dried residue in the seam at the bottom. Tinted the resin a faint brown. 

Aha.

Experimented some with a very few instant coffee granules dissolved in acetone, experimented some using just a little of it, it worked. Doesn’t take much at all, try a drop or so of the coffee/acerone mix in your resin, you can always add more but getting it out is kind of a problem. 

Now, don’t try to put color ( of any kind) in your filler or hotcoat. Do tints like this your laminate, it’s the same thickness throughout (when you squeegee it right)  and so the same color ‘depth’. Filler or hotcoat generally aren’t, so it looks blotchy. When you feather sand the tinted cloth, it kinda blends. Not perfect, but as good as you’ll get.

The ‘suntan’ is in the foam, not the glass, and only about the top 1/8" or so. If you have a chunk out of it, you can replace the foam with standard Gorilla Glue foaming glue, it goes off to a brownish yellow and you can glass over it with clear… Otherwise, do the color in the lamination as I mentioned above. 

Okay, this is for a light tan- sometimes you see really waterloggged old boards where it’s gone to a dark brown. Those…are best off put on a wall. 

hope that’s of use

doc… 

That’s a killer tip. I am kind of beyond that point but I’m really tempted to sand and lay down some new glass just to see how it turns out. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll try it on a small ding near the nose and see how thst goes. Thanks for the info, doc!

De nada. For small batches, where even a drop might be too much color, just dip a wooden stir stick in the color mix and stir it in the resin a bit,  Again, you can always add more -

hope that’s of use

doc…

I have learned to do my color matching before I add hardener, so I can take my time without feeling rushed.

Nice! Great tip Huck. You guys rock. I decided I’m redoing the fin so I just need to sand some so it’s  not too bulky with the extra glass. Will definitely report back with results.

Good job.  Ding repair teachs the fundamentals of working with Fiberglass materials.  For fin placement next time use a Carpenters Square.  For ding repair there is no need to buy a fancy “Shapers Square”.  Using a square will help you to make a precise alignment of the fins.  Put simply;  You would align the square to the stringer and the rear of the existing fin.  Then just flip the square over to the side on which you are repairing the fin.  This will give you position of the rear of the fin and the corresponding distance from the stringer.   Lowel

Hey McDing - getting the fin placemnt right was tricky. While researching It I found that you can use a shapers square but I didn’t want to invest in a tool for a single time use. I basically cut out a piece of cardboard and flipped it for the other fin. That was for the angle. To get the position right I used a ruler. So I measured it right, but while tacking it on with resin and taping it down, it was moving around a little. Looking back I made it harder than it needed to be. I wasn’t even thinking I could use a carpenters square.

Ah, the square is your friend for a lot of things. I have the 16"/24" framing squares I keep around for all sorts of work, the longer baseline makes it more accurate… 

Taping your fin in place so that it stays there. Yep, drove me absolutely batshit. Three words- Hot Glue Gun. A little of that is lovely, hardens real fast, generally clear or clear enough , you don’t need to go nuts with it, a couple dabs/short light beads of the stuff and plenty good enough to hold the thing there until you glass it well and thoroughly. 

I didn’t stumble across this, by the way, no credit to me whatsoever, it’s industry standard somebody told me about… Harbor Freight or your local hardware store or the local swap shop, get a cheapo, plenty good enough… 

Have fun- hope that’s of use

doc…  

A hot glue gun would have been great. We have one in the house that I use all the time for boogie board repairs. Hindsight is overrated. I am definitely going to pick up a square. I’m enjoying the process of fixing up boards and learning all that stuff and thinking of picking up a few banged up boards for practice. Thanks again for the info, my friend. 

(chuckling) Right? There’s a lot of ‘duuuh’  moments in this trade, as in any trade when you bump into something that somebody else worked out before. 

Me, I like the Stanley aluminum pro grade framing squares- they don’t rust, they’re relatively light, they’re a little pricy but it’s not like they wear out. And in my younger days doing houses I used to build a lot of stairs and lay out a lot of rafters. Spending another ten bucks ( then) for reliability made all kinds of sense.

As they last a long time, you can find used ones…that may not be square any more. Check them with a known good square the same size or with an accurate tape measure, the 3-4-5 method, if your tape can’t pick it up it’s close enough. There are ways to bring back a tweaked one but you never really trust it afterwards, pass on that one and on to the next.

(chuckling again) It can be interesting, it can be fun. You can make a little pocket money at it too. And an excuse to pick up new or new-to-you tools, which can be useful for domestic bliss continuation purposes. 

enjoy

doc…

I started looking into different squares and I think I went down a carpenters square rabbit hole. I started looking into the one you mentioned and ended up with starette squares, used by woodworker and engineers so they’re very accurate. My grandad was an engineer so I can appreciate the accuracy of tools and thought about buying one, but I think it would be overkill for my purposes. I still have a lot of the tools my grandad left me like calipers and micrometers but I never really saw a square in his garage. Anywho, I’ll probably go with your recommendation. 

(chuckling) I really was going to warn you about those- lovely, precise, a truly amazing variety of squares and measuring tools of …well, amazing varieties. Their clamps, for instance. Very easy rabbit hole to fall down., between micrometers and calipers and…yeah, whoa, Johnny-boy, you’re about to go down that very same hole, watch out for the bunny.

Priced accordingly and as you say, way overkill for these purposes. But absolutely lovely.

In my theoretical retirement I’m rearranging my shop to accomodate a South Bend lathe and welders and such I’ve had for a while, if you have one of these (http://www.lathes.co.uk/rockwellmillers/ or the Clausing equivalent) getting dusty in a corner we can definitely talk- and as a consequence ( the lathe came with several boxes of tooling but no chest full of measuring goodies) I have been learning about the varieties of micrometers and so on and haunting the used market. Just cool stuff.

I have a buddy who does use such stuff in woodworking, but he does things like shoji screens, wonderfully precise work If I was building similarly precise things of wood, hollow wooden surfboards like Paul Jensen’s say, yeah - that degree of precision is something you want. Surfboards in general, not so much.

My grandfather too was an engineer, electrical though, so he hearkened back to the tools he used when he made the money to go to school. Apparently he was a lumberjack and quite a good one, when the cutting tools were human powered. His double-bitted axe, ah, thing of beauty. Many stories. 

And I’ll close this post out before I embark on one or several.

doc…

Now you’re really taking me down memory lane. I don’t own a lathe, but my grandad had them in his garage, I believe it was a Lionel, and I turned many cool things once I learned to use it.

 

I never mastered the lathe, sadly, and when my grandfather got older and had health issues and could no longer work, he sold it to pay medical bills… bummer. He never did like working with wood; thought it was too messy.