Surfing Waves

As i was rinsing myself out at the beach after a session i noticed the board started to slip off the wall i had placed it against.
I reached out and grabbed it by the rail but since my hand was wet it slipped.

I watched it in slow-mo as it slammed against the floor and as it slipped through some stone steps.


After reviewing the damages i was lucky enough to not have any major craks or dings from the fall.
But I did found a lot of sctaches and some minor craks.

I have the following questions:

1) I have this thing called SOLAREZ i use to repair small cracks. I have put this thing over all the minor cracks and on all the scratches where i feel my nail gets stuck at. In order to water seal them.
There was a trully big one at the nose but i think i did a fine job at repairing that one.
Yet there are some minor sctratches that appear to not have gone through the fiberglass. I am thinking about not putting Solarez on those.
Is this okay?

2) When i look very carefully the board seems to have some "inner craks", i dont know how to explain myself, but if you look closely you can see some cracks underneath the fiberglass. what are those things? Do they compromise the board strenght?


I am very sad cause i take a lot of care of my board i always keep it inside its bag.
Yet i let this one "slip".

That 'cracking' you describe is normal, and you'll usually see it if you look closely enough. Its just from the pressure of where you put your feet/hands/head, and from the flexing of the board.
As long as its not a proper crack, then you dont need to worry about fixing these.

And as for dropping the board? We've all done it

Thanks for the reply!

i feel better now

Never trust walls!

Beachbum wrote:Never trust walls!

Especially when viewed in slow motion

Yep done that, heart breaking. I placed mine against the garage door when getting it out of the van, two inch long hole on the rail
The last damage was caused when i thought i could ride shore breaks, ripped a fin right off.
Hence i always lay the board down and don`t surf shore dump

yep done it too running to get the train and cracked the tail of my qued

drowningbitbybit wrote: Its just from the pressure of where you put your feet/hands/head

Uh? Where do you put your head, then??

My heart goes out,
Im a naturally positive person tho and after a quick sulk i saw it as a good oppertunity to learn the art of board repair, did a good job and its nice and smooth and apart from being a bit dark , you cant tell .

Just need to get my hands on Chasing daylights board now... that things more holes then fibreglass.

A little ding here and there is usual stuff. if it didn't go further than the fiber glass, no need to worry.

let just say-- we all done it at some point or another..

don't let it dampen ur day buddy.

what goes up must come down.. so keep it down.

Growing up my dad drove off without strapping the boards down.. A few times

Don't feel bad!

Nooit bru, no worries man

My mini mal landed up in the pier.....twice . First time my leash snapped and I just saw it get smashed into the pier in slow mo. Few scratches here and there, put som resin on, and all good! Second time I tried to ride through the pier and pop out the other side....haha yeah right, ended up smacking it into one of the pillars. Took it home, saw a mother of a hole in the rail . After some glass, resin, and sanding its all good

been watching too much Lords Of Dogtown!!

Not strapping down,,,, oh man that one would suck,,, ha ha ha and hella hard to ever live down....

Sometimes the 'suck test' helps if there's a scratch/crack that you're not sure about. If you can seal your lips around it and suck any air/water through then it's definitely through. I've fixed some little cracks that somehow went straight through even though they were itty-bitty. Just pretend it's one of the ladies from the 'Babe of the Day' thread.

...on a side note, I drove off in a hurry with my guitar on the roof of my car once... Never a surfboard yet though!

hahah same thing happened with my board.try pressure dents just from tying your board down cause you were scared itd fly away!

Hi

Im going to run through why you should not use solar activated tube products for cracks, dings, etc.

Solar activated tube products are made with very short fibers of glass, which means that they are not going to bond well to your board.

this also means that when you are surfing and your board flexes, these short fibers will open up and allow water in, this water will then get trapped in your crack/ding which builds moisture in your board this will then create a week point in your board leading to a snap or a de-lamination.

Your board is not made out of Solarez therefore i would not recommend putting it into your board, IT WILL LET WATER IN.

You need to repair your board the way it was made to avoid future troubles.

it happens to everybody. i was heartbroken when it happened to my first board. almost cried lol

surfboard repair wrote:Hi

Im going to run through why you should not use solar activated tube products for cracks, dings, etc.

Solar activated tube products are made with very short fibers of glass, which means that they are not going to bond well to your board.

this also means that when you are surfing and your board flexes, these short fibers will open up and allow water in, this water will then get trapped in your crack/ding which builds moisture in your board this will then create a week point in your board leading to a snap or a de-lamination.

Your board is not made out of Solarez therefore i would not recommend putting it into your board, IT WILL LET WATER IN.

You need to repair your board the way it was made to avoid future troubles.

Some of what you say is correct but many of the dings that surfboards pick up are very small and in areas that just do not suffer from large amounts of flex.
Now personally i would say use the correct stuff, but i wold as i have access to it.
But i see nothing wrong with small dings being fixed at the beach with solarez as many are. Better to do this as a temporary repair than nothing at all.

KS