I've repaired dings before using suncure and sanding it down, it sealed the ding for a while, but then it eventually starting taking in water again, and the next ding i ended up taking to a shop to fix and was charged like $125 total for fixing 3 dings, which i thought was a big time rip off...so now i want to do it myself and make sure i do it right, i've been watching short clips on youtube and i have a better idea now on how to do it. I got a big kit and will start repairs soon, but i have some questions. I have 2 boards that I need to repair, one is a epoxy board, which i never repaired before, and the repair is on the deck close to the rail and the other is on the bottom of a poly board and its pretty big, by heel hit the bottom of it during a bad wipe out. Both dings are pretty messy, meaning its not just a fill, there are cracks coming out. Should I cut around the cracks to make one uniform section to fill and patch? or should i just fill the cracks....i was hesitant in doing this cause thats what i did last time with the suncure and it started taking water after 6 months. I have a full kit now with the resin mix and everything. so just need some advice
Generally speaking, yes, you would cut out the cracks and repair the whole area. It gets a bit tricky depending on how big and exactly where the ding is. A picture would help me answer this better.
You need to cut out the entire bad part. Cut the glass at the edge of the ding and remove the glass within the ding and any that is delaminated around the edge. Make sure the foam is dry. Fill with a mix of resin, and Q cell. Don't use more harderner then is neccesary especially if the area to fill is more than 1/4" deep. Sand smooth, then laminate a piece of cloth which overlaps the repair about 2 inches on all sides. Sand lightly and sand the edges smooth, brush on a coat of resin, then wet sand smooth with 220 grit, then 400 then 600. With the right amount of Q-cell you will have an almost perfect match. When sanding be careful not to sand thru the original or new glass and try to keep the area flat by not using concentrated pressure in one area. I use a sanding sponge behind the sand paper which works very well. Also, to get a good bond, you need to sand the area that the repair will contact the original glass with med. grit. Proper glass laminating is very important on rail dings, especially when they are in the center third of the board, as that type of ding can weaken the board a lot. This method is for PU boards. For epoxy boards, you will need to use epoxy and the proper foam dust or you will have a real mess on your hands. Good luck!!
the bottom pix looks like a tuflite or some other kind of pop out board. You can't use polyester resin on that one. If you buy epoxy resin, you can repair both of the boards pictures with that (it also bonds to poly resin and doesn't affect poly foam). As far as fixing, the advice above is right.
How do you cut the fiberglass out? Like in ding where there's no physical cracks but there's obvious damage to the glass, like the guys poly board photo above except a little less severe.
let me tell you something you must have done sopmething bad to put that kind of ding in a tuflite board. let me ask you is that an al merrick? casue by the stripes on the rails it looks like it could be an al merrick epoxy.
If your in monmouth county bring it to me. Ill do t hem cheao for you. I fix dings as a part time job. Im better then any shop and charge less. Get in touch with me. Frankinplasm@aol.com
i fixed my poly board, it came out perfect....my epoxy board though is another story. I mixed the resin exactly like the instructions said and followed all the instructions to a T...but the resin would never dry, i left out in the for 2 hours in the sun after and it never dryed... my board is a al merrick tuflite flyer
I suppose it is possible that you have some bad epoxy, if it hasn't cured at all it is possible that the two parts that you mixed are in fact only one part; either the bottles were mis labled or you made a mistake. No question though, epoxy is a little tricky at times, I've had it do some strange things at times for me. You'll have to take it all out and start over. Get some new epoxy if you are sure you mixed it rite, and make sure you mix the amounts as per the instructions. Hopefully it just hardened very slow because of the cooler weather and humidity that we are experiencing now.
2 hours and "never" are completely different things for epoxy resin. Good surfboard quality epoxy resin usually isn't hard after 2 hours at room temp. A gooey taffylike texture after 2 hours wouldn't surprise me at all especially if you worked on a cool day. Heat will do more than sun to speed up the cure if the air is cool outside. Mix the resin/hardener in a warm place, do the repair over, and let it set up in a warm place.
i use a dremel tool with a little cutting wheel attachment.n I can't imagine doing ding repairs without a $30 rotary tool and all of the cool attachments. cut just deep enough to go through the glass and into the foam a bit, loosen the bad glass from the foam with an exacta knife blade and peel it up slowly trying to avoid pulling up divots of foam.
thats why when i get dings in my boards i taka it to my friends dad who is awesome at fixing my dings. plus he does it all free for me since he's known me since i was a baby. also that my dad doesnt want all the left over crap sitting in our garage and ruining everything in it, thats why i take it to my friends.
The dremel tool is the way to go. With the different attachments, you can do everything from cutting out large pieces of fiberglass to sanding very small cracks. I only wish I could find stainless steel cutters so they would stop rusting when not in use. This probably won't be a problem if I didn't live right on the beach, the trade off is worth it though.
