Hey guys, looking for some sagely advice on how to proceed fixing my ride.
Took it out on the weekend in some decent swell and got thown around a fair bit.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
FIRST -
Check the length of the cord between the rail saver and the leash plug. The rail saver only works if the cord length is correct. It looks like the cord was too long and ripped through the tail(?) Shorten it.
Remove the fins.
Before you get carried away on digging out damaged foam, try just pressing it back in to place with your hand. It’s likely that most of the displaced foam can be muscled back where it belongs. Hit it with a rubber mallet or whatever but it should mostly go back in place. Once you do that, grind down any high spots and loose glass. Some ragged glass flaps are OK as long as they don’t stick up above the surface of the surrounding glass.
This would also be a good time to grind down to the bare glass about 1 1/2" - 2" around the damaged area. You will be overlapping with fresh fiberglass and you want it to end up flush.
Fill any holes or gaps with some resin/microballoon ‘putty’ or ‘bog.’ Maybe add a little white pigment to the mix. Try to squish it in to any gaps or voids.
When cured, grind the putty just below flush and mask off the area for your fiberglass. Ideally the tape will be at the point where any scuffed/prepped areas meets the original finish.
Fiberglass over the repair with a couple of layers, making sure it overlaps to undamaged area. Hot coat and sand. If you have an airbrush, this might be a time to fog some off-white water base paint over the repair to make it look even.
Gloss/clear coat and polish.
Looks like a LOT of damage on the bottom glass to me… enough to have to remove most of it. You want to get the bottom contour back as precisely as possible, without any lumps, bumps, ridges or dips. This might require more sanding and re-repairing than you’d like to do, particularly if you’re not a repair guru.
Deck looks like all you have to do is clean it up with a utility knife. Crushed foam might not go back into place easily, and what does should be filled with filler, as John said. Back the deck and tail block rail with tape when you fill it to keep anything from sagging or running through.
It’s a repair. It’ll look like one when you’re done. Don’t worry about it. It will still ride as good as it did before.
Ouch.....
Looking at the picture, I see what bit ya. As John said, shorten the string. I like no more than an inch between the rail-saver strap and the deck.
Now, I'd go along with what John has suggested, though I might push the bottom glass that's buckled with my thumbs rather than going at it with a mallet. If the thumbs won't do it, put it on a soft surface, like a sofa cushion, and thump with a mallet, but use a piece of wood to spread the thump out some. You don't want to break it any further, y'know?.
Maybe use a little plywood with wax paper between it and the bottom to hold everything while you put the filler to it. Some weights or something to keep it from migrating, or some straps applied snug.
If the foam pushes in too far when you're pushing, I'd use a thin flat blade to get the glass off it, put filler behind the glass and have at it rather than cutting it off. Me, I am willing to go to a good deal of extra effort to keep the old glass, it's simpler and easier in the long run and the old glass helps to contain your filler. Oh, and it looks better, some thin cracks that show filler look a lot better than little patches of cloth. And if you do that, you don't have any need to do any color matching.
This might be an excellent opportunity to try the filler properties of white Gorilla Glue: it's light, it's white foam, it can be smeared in with your flat blade or a thin wood-strip coffee stirrer, then put the ply plus wax paper to it as I mentioned above so that the expanding foam doesn't bulge anything. And you won't have the translucent look that resin-based filler gives you.
Also, when getting resin-based filler into 'complex' damage like that, I find that either I have to go with a thinned mix ( which dribbles out and leaves air bubbles under the cloth) or I try it with standard vaseline-consistency filler which doesn't necessarily get everywhere it needs to go and you have air bubbles again.
Don't be afraid to do it in stages, get the bottom right first and then the deck. If you take on both in one shot it gets maybe more complicated and more chances for something to go wrong. I'll bet you can guess why I try to go for simple stages rather than one big and complicated one. Yep, I've screwed those up before.
Probably telling you something you know already, but mask over the fin box openings. I'll just bet you can guess why that's a priority with me too. Sanding dust can be a bother to clean out of a fin box, let alone resin or filler.
Glass, hotcoat etc. as John says. I'd dab away at the edges of the existing cloth with some resin before putting the cloth on, you may be able to re-saturate those fibers at the edges of the ding, it'll look better. Also, don't be afraid to use a good deal of cloth over all, top and bottom in two stages, lapping the rails. It's easier that way and it tends to look like 'I meant to do that' rather than a patch which in turn ( at least I think) looks better too. Looks are important.
hope that's of use
doc....
One more thing... if the displaced foam has separated from below (kind of hard to tell from pics), you might try injecting some resin or clear Gorilla Glue in the gap underneath so it'll stay in place. Mask off the deck, turn the board belly up and shoot some your resin/GG in any gaps before pressing the foam back in place. Clamp and wait for it to cure before proceeding.
here’s another option: saw it all off and replace with a tailblock.
I used to cut out the messed up part then glue a small piece of foam in. Then glass over. Be sure to feather off the area around the patch so the glass will sand down nice a smooth. You might be able to save the deck part and not have to deal with matching the colors.
Checkout the boardlady’s site. She has really nice examples of boards she’s fixed.
Or you can do what I do now, just put the board away and use other boards until you finish the new board you’re currently working on.
Thanks everyone for the advice. Ill start next week and let you all know how it turns out.
Just spent a couple of hours on board lady’s site. She is awesome.