Okay, a few things-
What’s been said already is all correct. That’s the thing, a lot of how much to sand, what methods and materials to use for a given repair, it all comes with the experience you haven’t got yet. Moreover, there’s different ways to tackle a given repair, depending on what materials you have and are comfortable with, likewise your tools and your experience with them.
For instance, I’m prone to using a 7" sander/grinder in a lot of situations - you shouldn’t unless you spent twenty years doing boat work. You’d leave a trail of destruction. Go with the light touch instead.
But what I’m gonna touch on is what these dings come from and what to do about them after you finish fixing what you have now.
First off, the rails; what I call garage dings. You get those when the board hits something, gets dropped, smacked into a doorway, whatever. You get a very, very few from collisions in the water. The latter are what they are, but getting yourself a half decent padded board bag will prevent the vast majority of the others.The bag also protects against UV damage and more, really extends the life of the board.
Then you have the stuff like those depressions along the stringer. Heel dents. It’s a tradeoff between how heavy you glass the deck, how light you want the board and how hard you stomp to turn the thing. Too late to add a deck patch, but do get a deck pad. The heel dents have a function, they tell you right where to put said pad.
In the Second World War, in England they did a study of where airplanes returning from combat missions had been hit, be it by flak (anti-aircraft cannon) or the guns and such from enemy aircraft. They looked at where they had been hit most and reccommended that these places on the aircraft be armored.
But somebody else, I’ve heard it was a high-ranking general, I’va also heard it was an early operations research guy, somebody said “No, put the armor everyplace else. You forget, these are the planes that made it back”
hope that’s of use
doc…
