If you remember, We were preparing to go the the surf festival a few weeks ago. I went to grab my surfboard, only to discover that it had a good size crack down the middle. It was a very sad moment in my surfing history. This Saturday was the day. I was all siked up about repairing the three inch crack in my surfboard. My husband, Steve and I drove to Home Depot for supplies to do the repair.
First, I laid my surfboard out in the yard for a little Florida sunshine for 15 minutes. (This melts the wax enough so that I can scrape it off easily.)
When the wax melts it should be soft and shiny but not so wet that it drips down the side of the board. I scraped the wax off the top of my board and then washed the areas in need of repair with soap and water.
I set the board up on saw horses in the garage, turned on my music and started inspecting my board for more breaks and dings. I found a few so I marked them with blue sticky notes. I used 100 grit sand paper to sand down all the cracked areas on my board. When I started to work on the long crack in the middle of my board, I opened up the crack with a knife and a made sure there was room for the fiberglass mixture to fit into the cracks so that it bonds correctly to the board.
Now, you should know that I have done a couple of repairs to my board in the past so I should have stopped when I noticed a few concerning issues. I opened the container of Bondo and saw some green paste. Ok, granted I should have stopped there but, I kept going. I kneaded the tube of hardener as instructed. I put some green Bondo on the hard surface and added the hardener and mixed almost completely. Then I took it over to the surfboard and started applying the fiberglass mixture to my board. By this time it was brown in color but I was hoping that once it dried that it would some how magically dry to a crystal clear appearance.
So, here I am spreading this brown goop on my board and suddenly before I can thin it out, it dries up on me. “For the love of Peanut Butter!” Shortly after I did this, crying ensued. But, I continued to work on the other areas of my board. I was upset about the color but at the same time I was determined to fix my board so that I could go surfing on Sunday. This green to brown, hopefully magical fiberglass mixture was all that I had to work with and I didn’t want to stop.
I spent a good hour sanding down all four areas where I added the the fiberglass blend. Unfortunately, it dried so fast that I couldn’t thin it out fast enough. This meant that I spent the next hour and a half sanding down the fiberglass splooges (if it’s not a word, it should be). Every twenty minutes I would take a break inside and then get back to work on my board. In the end, I managed to make it look acceptable. I sanded it down as much as possible and tried to keep in mind that I’ll be getting a new surfboard soon. After all, my birthday is coming up. I’m turning 32…again.
I’ve decided to make this board the one that I paint a mural on later. I’ll hang up on my back porch when I’m a little more confident in my painting abilities.
Here are the before and after photos. It’s kinda funny lookin’ but the repair worked. I took it out for a test drive on Sunday and you almost don’t see it once the board is covered with wax.
artisticsurf.net 