My son ended up with a TON of air bubbles on his freelap fish. He forgot to resin underneath the logo so in addition to all the little ones the entire logo is an air bubble. What’s the best way to procees here? It’s poly. Slice into all the bubbles with a razor and re-resin those spots?
Break out the razor blade. Scab or cut the bubbles out completely. Cut/scrape the logo off. Patch each spot or lay another layer of 4oz.over the whole deck. These bubbles are the result of poor wet out technique. Not the result of some contamination. Next time try a “cheater coat”. After you have wet everything out and wrapped the rails,nose, tail etc. quickly catalyze half the amount again and squeegee the whole side a second time. Caution; If you wait until your lamination has hardened it’s too late for a cheater coat.
Thanks, very helpful. By “wet out technique” you mean fully saturating the fiber? He’s worried another layer will make the board too heavy, so he’s goin to try to cut each out and patch them individually.
Yes. Not a good enough “wet out”. It takes a few times to really train the eye and see dry spots. Some guys get it right away. Some don’t. Just don’t skimp on resin and spread it evenly. Usually it is a case of working from the middle outward to the rails. Once you’ve got the rails, nose tail etc tucked, go back and resqueege with the excess resin you pulled off the blank. This is the point at which you can MEK a little more resin and re saturate the whole thing with a “cheater coat”. Also if you pull to hard with the squeegee you will pull too much resin off and create dry spots. Weight depends on how many layers of what you have already. An additional layer of 4oz over a layer of six is no big deal.
My first board was pretty tough looking too, dy spots and streaks and stuff. Ended up doing dark tinted rails to hide my transgressions. Then I stripped the board a year later and re-shaped and reglassed it, fixing most of the major issues and learning a new fin box install technique. I admire the kid for seeing it through. Hopefully it will ‘spark joy’ (Marie Kondo) and the kid will try a second board. My one kid who got us going on all of this no longer makes boards, still creative though, and another did a collaberation with me on a SUP.