I am wondering if anyone knows what the best way to go about a significant longboard repair. I have a 9' 4" mctavish and it has a lot of de lamination on the deck. I was thinking about cutting the glass off and spreading some sun cure under the glass then letting it sit out in the sun. I have alot of repair tools but have never done a repair of this magnitude. I would take it to Blair or Chauncey but i didn't pay much for the board and don't think its worth that much.
not In the words of the great Turtle "bag it!". The problem with delam. is that is adds alot of extra weight to the board. If you just want a piece of poo in the water, then try to fix, otherwiswe-time for a new board! Been there already, all the thing did after the repair was pearl dive!
it's probably not worth fixing but it you do, strip the old glass off and reglass the affected areas. i buddy did that and the board was usable but much heavier.
Board Blair would most likely tell you the same thing as these guys. Its not worth the time and effort unfortunatly.
There's a much easier solution than stripping off the glass. You can drill small holes, 1 mm or so, in the delamed glass. Get a syringe with a small tip, you can find these at craft stores because I guess there is some sort of crafty type thing girls do with them. Mix your resin, fill the syringe, then squirt the resin in the holes. Put something heavy on top of the area and wait a day. If you are lucky the new resin will bond the old glass and the foam and your delam will be fixed, at least for a while. You are adding a little bit of weight, but it doesn't have to be significant because a little bit of resin goes a long way in there.
Smaller delams can be fixed as noted above (drill and squirt...). Bigger ones you will have to cut out and reglass. Drill several holes big enough for the tip of the syringe. This way you can get resin under the whole delam area. Go easy with catalyst as the injected resin gets much hotter than usual (ask me how I know this...). Yes, you are adding weight, but heck, its a longboard - losta people think weight is a good thing in a longboard...
for what its worth, i think the drill and fill "fix" just makes you feel like you've repaired something but you've really just replaced air pockets with hard resin pockets. The delam areas will eventually spread as they would have anyway and the drill holes will begin to take in water.. Theres a reason the deck is delaminating in the first place: the foam-to-glass bond has weakened. The times i've done the drill and fill within 6 months of use there were new delams showing up adjacent to the filled spots after six months of normal use. I'd say if your talking 1 or 2 spots no more than a few inches then try the drill and fill and you might want to use SLOW cure epoxy resin which has better adhesive properties than poly resin. (Epoxy resin is compatible with WHATEVER kind of board you have) If its already got multiple delams covering large areas then your whole deck is gonna need reglassing anyway, so do it before those delams start taking on a bunch of water, which WILL happen.
