Surfing Waves

I'm kinda new to surfboard repair and I was trying to sand out a repair from a previous owner. I noticed some of the grey area doesn't seem to have resin over it. Is the grey stuff already waterproof on it's own, or would that need to be sealed over with resin also?

The grey area feels hard like resin and also seems to sand down just the same, but maybe its just the lighting playing tricks on me and there's actually resin covering it.

could be epoxy putty, almost looks like the repair was solarez or similar (the white bit) and then they ran out of solarez, so used putty (the gray part). Can you scratch it with your fingernail - thats not a 100% test, but if its hard and you can't scratch it, then its doing the same job as fibreglass. If it is putty then its probably a bit heavy

Is that the tail of a fish board?

Looks just like grey microballons that you could find in hardware-stores.

The repaired area looks very shiny to me, just like shiny resin. How much material did you sand? The degree of waterproof depens on the mix ratio of the putty. If it is a dense mixture it should be fine, if it's porous it may leak. But the putty is meant to replace damaged foam, and strength comes from cloth.

Thank you both. The grey stuff is definitely hard like resin. It was a really bumpy uneven surface before i started sanding.. so I think it was probably just the light refracting differently where the surface is still a little uneven. I think that's making the grey area seem bare when its actually not.

I'll probably put another thin layer of glass over the existing stuff just to be sure. Thanks for the suggestions.

dtc, yeah it's a fish tail repair

That looks like a poorly done repair job. What were they thinking? There is a 2 part epoxy putty that is gray. Could be that

oldmansurfer wrote:That looks like a poorly done repair job. What were they thinking? There is a 2 part epoxy putty that is gray. Could be that

Yeah it was kind of a salvage job. It had crude repairs but I really liked the board and thought I could try to restore it.

It originally had duct tape over the tail repair and when asked, the seller just said "everybody does that".

Hope I'm able to learn quick and try to restore some of it back to looking more original.. or at least permanent. Here's what it looked like before I started working on it..

Ta-Da!
I had some fun with an electric sander after getting the repair patched.
I'm planning to rebuild the corner of the tail when there's more time.. but I think she's sea worthy again for now

I won’t say it looks ‘good’ but it looks waterproof and useable, which is of course more important.

That saying may well apply to me just as much as to your board

dtc wrote:I won’t say it looks ‘good’ but it looks waterproof and useable, which is of course more important.

That saying may well apply to me just as much as to your board

lol Yea it was an uphill battle with the grey mystery material. The red Sharpie actually looked like a really good match after everything dried. Too bad it has the dark stuff underneath the glass.

Rebuilt the point onto the fish tail. That was much more difficult than I thought it would be.

I'm hoping it was worth the effort, because I was reading that water wraps around soft rails and releases from edged or pinched rails. It made me realize why most surfboards have edged rails, for at least a quarter of the way up from the tail. And it convinced me to put a hard edge back onto this one..

Good job. I am no fish tail expert but turned down/ hard edged rails for the last 1/3 or so of the board would be usual for most boards. I guess you will know how well you have done when you surf!

(and you now know why fish tails are always getting smashed/dinged/dented)

dtc wrote:Good job. I am no fish tail expert but turned down/ hard edged rails for the last 1/3 or so of the board would be usual for most boards. I guess you will know how well you have done when you surf!

(and you now know why fish tails are always getting smashed/dinged/dented)

Thanks man.. yeah I was glad to be able to put the edges back onto the tail after thinking about it more. I read that Jerry Lopez actually has hard edges almost all the way up his boards because of the grip he likes to have on the steep faces at Pipe. His new Something Fishy design basically has the same thing when I checked one at a shop. That thing probably throws water in every direction.

Not much opportunity to test it this week.. Gail force offshore winds.. they're literally sending our waves back out to sea in the Northeast lol.