Surfing Waves

Got a ding near the nose - most damage on bottom, a bit shatter into the rail and into the deck.

This is what the original ding looks like:



I first hand-sanded it with 80 grit.

On the bottom, could see the cloth so I stopped.

On the rail/deck, cloth wasn't fully exposed but it seemed smooth enough.



Then, I mixed poly resin and q-cell (no idea how much q-cell to put in so tried to do 1:1). Gave it a lot of stirring. Then added in the catalyst. A lot of stirring. It's still very liquidy without turning into a paste. So some more drops of catalyst.

Then it suddenly began to harden. So I used a stick to quickly put the mix onto the ding.

But then it looked like this now....which, doesn't look good:



Questions:
(1) There's a small area right on the rail that is not covered by the mixture (visible in the last pic). Should I sand this whole mess down and redo?
(2) Or should I proceed to sand it down and laminate 2 pieces of cloths?

nuh, it looks great....

I've heard putting the q-cell down first, then mixing the resin until you get the right thickness and then adding the catalyst is the way to go. Catalyst is like a 1% ratio, so a few drops too much and its problem city

Also, you then wrap the area with cling fill to provide a smoother finish

I assume what you have is hard? So not soft ie its fine to keep what you have, it doesnt need to be totally redone?

In which case, you just seem to have put in way too much, so your solution seems to be a bit of elbow work to sand it down (maybe starting with a very judicious use of an orbital sander?). Then if there are any small areas that need fixing, might be easiest to just whack in some solarez rather than mixing up another batch.

Thanks dtc - yep put in way too much q-cell+resin... Update: I've sanded down this whole mess to something like this:


It seemed that the original fiberglasses weren't damaged; rather it's the outermost coats.

That said, my plan next is to clean up this surface a bit and still putting 2 layers of 4oz to reinforce the board...Someone please let me know if this sounds like a bad idea.

Why did you put Q-cell above the cloth layer?

Had no idea what I was doing...
Should I sand all of it down to second set of photos where clothes are very exposes?

I would say if you aren't replacing foam Qcell is not needed. And the ding should have been sanded down a bit further because there are bits of damaged resin along the edge of the ding and if the glass isn't damaged then there is no need to glass over it. But if the glass under the ding was still solid I would just resin over it and smooth it out but that all depends on what is the construction of this surfboard

Q-cell isn’t for “strong”, it’s for “light”. Being used as a filler for missing foam blank. Your need tor filling in the missing area could have been better accomplished by cutting out 3 oval pieces of fiberglass cloth ( say dime size, nickel size and quarter size ). Then laminate them carefully so they don’t float up.

How it turned out The final gloss coat wasn't sanded to the point that it's hard to distinguish from normal surface. Stopped sanding since I didn't tape around the area during final sanding, and the surrounding area started to look a bit dull.

But it's smooth to the touch. When the board is in the water I can't tell the difference. Calling it a day for the first repair!

It's good to have one repair worth of experience. The next will hopefully be easier

Looks good.