I have a tuflite (yes i know i'm a douche for buying one) from when i wasn't as "educated" a consumer of surfboards, and some of the outer shell is chipped or scraped off. do i need to reseal this, or is it still watertight? i've tried putting an epoxy hotcoat over the little spots just in case, but it's impossible to sand because it screws up the color all around the repair (it's that light brown color). the epoxy also usually won't stay on, and gets "peeled" of when sanding with a lower grit. is this because it won't adhere to the paint shell, or because i'm not mixing the resin correctly? when it comes off it feels all soft and bendy. also if anyone knows a solution to the paint problem that would be huge help since it's going to be impossible to sell with marks all over it.
It's tough to match color perfectly. What you're shooting for is to just get close. Don't even think about resale value... just fix it and ride it 'till you're ready for a new board, and take what you can get for it. If you're chipped down to the brown stuff, it's likely that you're down to the pvc foam, which may still have the overlying fiberglass in tact... or not. Either way, it's still water tight, but if that gets any pinholes or is otherwise compromised, you will likely get water sucking into the foam. The core material of those boards is very low density stuff, and even though it's "fused" bead foam, it will still have plenty of air spaces to breathe in water. The trick to repairing is prep. You gotta rough that sh!t up good... 80 grit, minimum. Use high quality surfboard resin AND CLOTH, and you won't get rubbery peel-offs. Measure correctly (by weight if you're doing small batches) and get a fan deck or book of color samples from HD to match paint. And let that stuff cure for at least a day or two before you start to sand it. You need a full cure.
thanks for the response. i only have the ding all repair kit for epoxy, is this okay to use or are these any different from the regular batches? it has hardener, resin, and cloth. also, i've never done anything with paint on a surfboard so what kind would you recommend, and how should i seal it?
i just used the same epoxy kit on a tuflite i have. i got it used and it has alot of paint chipping as well. I dunno whats up with the paint but i dont see if being worth the time or effort unless you just want to give it a shot for experience. like LBCREW said use cloth. i never really sand my dings all perfectly, i try to use the min resin possible to saturate the cloth, then wax paper with tape over it to smooth it out and hopefully not exceed the 'rough sanded' area but it usually does, oh well. i did notice that the wax paper seemed to melt onto the epoxy? i hadn't used the stuff before, it's peeling away a bit, the paper not the epoxy repair. ding-all provides you with a peice of plastic and some thin paper? what's the paper for
For painting a repair area, fix the ding first... sand, fill if needed, patch, fair, hotcoat, sand... then paint... than a thin final hotcoat over that. Final sand, and you're done. If you do it this way, you're sealing the paint with a layer of epoxy, and that gets the most durable final result. The reason why you're board's all chipped up is because they paint on top of the finished product. If you paint on top of the finished repair, just some clear acrylic spray... but then you might see a shiny spot you'll have to sand with high grit wet/dry paper, or dull the sheen with rubbing compound. The resin in the Ding All kits is fine for repairs. I was just trying to make sure you weren't using boat resin or floor coating or something not appropriate for surfboards.
For color matching, get a fan deck of paint colors, and use any good quality acrylic paint. I've used good old Ben Moore lots of times. If you can find additives, get some straight acrylic, and bump up the acrylic level 15%. If you're good at mixing and matching colors yourself, just go get some Posca or Tempera and mix a few colors 'till you get what you want. If you don't care about matching, and just want to get close, get the closest Krylon spray can you can find. The automotive stuff is best. Remember everything dries lighter than it looks wet.
Couple of points, the core of the tuflites are fused cell EPS meaning that they allegedly won't take on any water even if you were to bore a hole through and surf it. If you are repairing it to sell and your efforts don't pan out there is an authorized surftech repair dealer in Harvey Cedars listed in the website (if you are in NJ but there are others up and down the East Coast).
oipaul's right about Tuflite's core material... it is supposed to be water tight, and not suck water. Whether the bond between the layers is water tight or not might be a potential issue. I'd still fix my dings.
Where on the website does it say that? The closest one i see on there is egg harbor. And LBCrew I haven't been able to get to home depot but I'm just about ready to try out the repair. My only concern is that the hotcoat will come off bendy and rubbery like last time, is there anything I can do to prevent this? You're definitely supposed to use the hardener with the hotcoat right? I'm assuming that's why it's called "hot".
A rubbery epoxy hotcoat is usually from an inaccurate mix ratio, or too much pigment. I've seen both first hand! Since small batches (a few fl. oz.) are hard to get dead on accurate by volume, I recommend a digital scale - 100:45 resin to hardener. If you don't have a scale, get a calibrated mixing cup, and mix up a decent sized batch at 2:1 resin to hardener by volume. Wasting a little resin is better than a bad repair job.
Or just hot coat with poly sun cure resin. The repair is fixed, the EPS core is protected, epoxy is a pain to mix in tiny batches and sets up slow when what you want to finish off that ding repair is a fast, sandable, hard hotcoat. Poly sun cure will work just fine for this.
