I snapped this stringered XPS board in a heavy tube at Queens Head near Port Macquarie a few years ago. The halves slept in the rafters until I had to recover from heart surgery in lockdown.
Here’s the story of its rebirth.
I glued it together using a negative of the original rocker. I built a flat bed CNC machine about 10 years ago. It can cut kitchen cabinets and rocker templates, and I manage to get boards off it too. It helps having my board files so I can cut rocker negatives for measuring and for repairs (I snap a lot of boards).
In the pics you can see the holes a Jabbed into the blank to help with glue binding, in accord with good practice for XPS.
Weight after glue together (starting weight) 3.67kg.
Once the board was togethr as one piece I got the Dremel out and cut out the snapped stringer a few inches each side of the break and about half depth. Even though the glue is meant to be stronger than the orignal wood, I thought a bit of solid wood would be a good thing.
Weight of stringer insert 17g
You’ll notice a weird pad configuration in the pics. That’s because I do kneeboards. I make these pads from 10mm ABS closed cell foam. I use 80g on a disk sander to stape them and fine the edges to 3-4mm (1/4"). I keep them small to reduce weight and glue them down with Sellys contact (the stuff used to glue down flooring!). Often the hardest thing about a repair is getting the pads and glue off.
Then into cleaning up the mess of torn cloth. A smart person would just cut off the cloth and re-lam. I’m not that person.
The cloth was stripped off most of the bottom, but the cloth was still attached to each half. I used the Dremel to get a clean cut to I could lift the cloth up. I got really frustrated by driving around in evening traffic and then came home and stabbed the blank a few thousand times. Then I glued the of cloth down with epoxy. I placed a lot of weight on the glued patches.
You’ll see an edge roller in the pic. Vital piece of kit for getting edges down. Available from any hardware store. I use baking paper to keep resin off the roller.
Then it was to sanding back, filling and wrapping the break with cloth.
In the pics you can see where I burnt through the 2 part urethane paint that we painted the board with originally.
You can also see that I minimized the amount of pad removal. I used an oscillating scraper to get the pad up, then elbow work with turps and various sharp tools to get the glue off.
Qcell top deck 5g resin/ 2g Qcell (10g = 0.35oz)
Colour matching is obviously not my strong point!
Patch of cloth over stringer insert 7g cloth/ 35g resin
Deck lam 90g resin / 30 cloth (I weigh my cloth first and the mix up resin to try to get a 1:2 loading cloth to resin, but I struggle to wet out at that loading, so I mix extra resin and throw away a few grams).
Home stretch. Thanks for your patience in this comedy of errors.
Bottom deck was a struggle to get smooth. Always going to be the case when glueing cloth back. Plus see note 2 below.
Bottom 30g resin / 6 Qcell
Bottom cloth 20 g / 80g resin
Top fill 20g resin
After rough sand 3.97kg (8.8lbs)
With pads and fins 4.28 kg (9.4lb) - a bit heavier than I like, but still light enough to surf as a daily driver.
Pic shows first place I got to surf this board after 6 years in the rafters (Cape Schanck in Vicco, Aus - scarey, sharkwise by ones self, and a hell climb down and up, but a fun wave, despite being a bit fat).
Notes:
Aesthetically a balls up. I could spray it, but I’ll just surf it a bit then let my talented wife @artbyjanezhou work her magic (you can see some of my retired boards on her Insta)
I used 2oz cloth trying to keep the weight down. Note to self, “Never, ever do that again”. The 2oz is so densely woven that air bubbles get trapped and it’s hard to get the cloth down evenly. Had to sand out bubbles all over the place.
Even though I keyed the urethan paint, there are patches on the bottom where repair glass has delaminated and I keep having to fair them in.
Sorry to hear you had to go thru surgery. Hope you are recovering nicely. Between your other thread and this one, I totally understand your dilemma with snapped stringerless blanks/boards. Being able to profile stringers and install them is a good cure. While I was living on Maui I made decent $$ putting Surftechs and BoardWorks back together with the paint stick trick. When I needed something longer I would cut a splint/Stringer from the Sanderlay Ply sold at Home Depot. Three ply at about 1/8" thick. The particular board I was most amazed at was the Bonga Perkins longboard made by BoardWorks(I believe). Having seen magazine adds with pictures of Bonga riding “Backdoor” Pipe on one of those boards is hard to believe. I seen them snap in three foot shore break. They were stringerless EPS with nothing more than a standard layup of Chinese cloth, Epoxy Resin and an automotive paint job. I loved the shape and the lite weight. But; I put more of those things back together for the surf schools on Maui than I care to remember. Because of their construction I used a longer splint similar to what you do. I would sink the stringer on the bottom about 1/4 or 1/2" below the surface and fill the remaining groove with a mix of ground EPS foam and Epoxy resin. Then sand and glass. Prime and paint white. There were no graphics on the bottom, so once painted and clear coated, you couldn’t even tell anything had been done.
