Broken Fin Box

just remove the pulg.. hollow out (with the circle drill if you have one) an area for a new plug... The way I have done it is, cut up a ton of fiberglass into tiny peices, stuff it around the fin plug and set it in as tight as possible. When i put the plug in, I make sure to loosely set a fin into the plug. That is very important to make sure you set the fin plug on the right plane and everything lines up the way it was designed. If you dont put a fin in, you could be way off on the angle of the fin when its all done... so I like to leave the fin in the whole time so I can make adjustments, then when I do the final sanding, I will take the fin out and leave just the plug...

Anyway, after that first step, then just drop a little resin in there. Enough to create a stable foundation in it... let it settle and all the air bubbles rise through the resin and let it harden for a day or so... Then I would sand around the area and make it nice and clean, and then fill in the rest with resin (making sure there is a substantital amount of glass shavings in it for stability and slowly fill in the resin... once you get a pretty clean, pretty full fin box, let it dry another 24-48 hours... then sand down the area, smooth it over completely... my last fin box replacement, I actually used some fiberglass and covered a small area of the fin plug (not the holes for tightening, but all around it) so when I sanded it down, it was pretty smooth, but was technically glassed over the fin box a little....

Im no shaper though, just a guy who has ghetto rigged many dings on my boards... and i used to pop fin plug like it was my job....

Not sure, but some of the shapers may glass over the whole plug, then use a tiny drill to hollow back out the holes, but that sounds sketchy....

If its a nice board, you may want to get it done professionally, cause a lot of times, once those fins boxes get damaged, the board will start dying... delams, water... there is a ton of pressure on your fins. You feet are on top of that, and all the torque involved in surfing is focused on your fins... so make it solid!

Good luck.

 

well, in my experiences, when a plug gets broken or chipped like that, there is usually structural damage around it, so I air on the side of caution and remove a substantial amount of glass around it... It is a waste if there is a bunch of delam or seperation between teh foam and glass around it... look at it like a tumor. You want to cut it out and anything it was corrupting... so I would use a small, thin exacto of something to try and release the rest of the plug and pull it out... I wouldn't be too worried about more foam or glass coming off around it... if it comes off that easy, you probably want to replace it with the shaving anyway to keep stability and prevent further corrosion. its better to be safe than sorry and cut out all the bad sh**. If it happened during a session, there was no doubt some water in it... if you dropped it or cracked it in transit, thats different, but most of the fin plug accidents happen from going underwater and hitting sand or reef, usually on a closeout barrel or if you let your board go over the falls.. It can get forced down pretty hard and catch sand and rip. or from riding in too far on the low tide or shorebreak and the fins catch sand...

 

First... is it a box (fusion) or a plug? Post a pic and I can tell you exactly what you need to do.

 

Stick a screwdriver in the plug and gently pull it back to its original position. Then take a 1 1/8" or 1 1/4" holesaw and make a drill jig or get an FCS Quik-set jig, center it over the hole and drill the broken plug out. Then reinstall a new one like zack619 described. Make sure to put a fin in both plugs to set the correct cant of the replacement plug.
Or bring it to the shop and we'll repair it back to new for ya.

~Brian
www.greenlightsurfsupply.com
Shape Your Surfing Experience