Seems to me the ‘‘option 2’’ will provide you some valuable information about the ‘‘how and why’’ a surfboard functions. A good learning experience, IMO.
If you have experience fixing dings like you say; Then by all means fix it. Repair all dings and it will be worth something as a used board and as a reference when you buy a blank and shape a board from scratch. There isn’t enough foam in that board to reshape or gain any valuable experience. But if you buy a blank and shape it, you will have a board to use for reference. Concave,rocker, fin placement etc. Strip the glass off of that “toothpick and foam will come off with it. By the time you hack on it, you’ll have an 1 1/2” Shortboard with no concave. If you fix it and sell it on Craig’s, You’d get enough out of it to buy a blank, fin boxes and maybe even enough for cloth and resin.
With all respect to Bill Thrailkill, I’m gonna say fix this board and buy a blank of the appropriate size if you want to experiment with variations on the board you’ve got now.
The thing is, reshaping a busted board, unless you’re making a longboard into a paipo, you have to compromise too much. Too much to work around. Especially if something doesn’t go according to plan. And it never does.
Gorilla glue the nose back on (you’ll have some squashed foam in the break, the GG makes that up), don’t waste your time trying to add dowels or stringers, Use a table and blocks and such so everything lines up right, dry fit it until it does before gluing.
Then, sand the original glass with coarse (60 grit or so) paper so you get a good bond, wrap it in, say, a 4"-6" band of 6 oz cloth centered on the break, well squeegeed for a light, strong lamination. If you want to do it as top, then bottom, good, teaches you how to do laps. Follow that with another band on top that overlaps it by a couple-three inches, front and back, squeegee that well too, hotcoat, sand, gloss, polish and you have a good strong reasonably light repair that should look pretty good besides.
And had a little Glassing 101 too. Small repairs, small patches, they’re quite different from glassing a whole board, this ( as you’ll doubtless discover ) is something else again. Go easy on the catalyst, so you have time to get it right. I’ll bet you can guess how I learned that one.
