In the last post, the first in this series of repairing a damaged wakesurfer, we showed several cracks and various other damaged areas. After we have identified the visible cracks, dents, dings and UGGGHS we do a hand checks along the rails, nose and tail looking for telltale signs of other damage. Sometimes it may not be readily visible but can be felt, so we do a visual inspection and then also this tactile inspection. What’s that old saying, damage to a wakesurfer is like an ant where there’s 1 there’s 10,000 behind the wall! As you run your hand along the outline try and feel for undulations, rough areas or anything that just feels irregular. If your hands feel something “off” then look in that area of the wakesurf board closely.
We have to grind away all of that loose and broken fiberglass and we’ll do that with a dremel or sanding pad. We like to tape off the areas outside of the selected repairs in case the sanding pad gets away from us, so that we don’t wreck the existing paint. It’s also a quick visual for those of us that wear bifocals!
Not a great picture, but we load up the sanding pad in preparation for grinding away at the cracks. What we try to do is grind the loose stuff away and get to solid fiberglass, plus taper the grind so that we can build up the joint with a succession of larger and larger fiberglass pathces as we repair the crack. Be especially careful not to grind away any part of the core. Angle the sanding pad so that the edge doesn’t accidentally slice the core of the board. We are also putting in the taper or bevel in the repair area so that we can build up the repair with layers of fiberglass as we fix this crack.
Oh here is that UGGGH crack again and you can see that we’ve ground out the crack to solid fiberglass and removed all the loose and fractured ‘glass but we’ve also discovered some damage to the underlying foam. We’ll need to fix that before we proceed, without adequate support, we’re just asking for further trouble. So we’ll rebuild that missing foam before moving on.
Whew! No underlying foam damage so this is just a rebuild of the damaged fiberglass and then some normal bodywork to get the paint matched as best as we can.
That’s it for the preparation part, the key is to clear out any of the loose cracked and messed up fiberglass and get down to something solid, then if there is damage to the underlying core, we fix that while we are at it. If you need to repair the core, you want to try to replace it with the same basic stuff. If the crack is big enough, or the damage to the underlying foam is significant enough routing it out and replacing with a chunk of foam that is later shaped is the best practice. If it’s EPS, it’ll be hard to do but you can grind up eps bits to make a sort of dust that can be used or in a worst case scenario, the dreaded Great Stuff foam can be used in tight spots.
So, grind to clean up. Fix any underlying core issues and then start laminating to rebuild the grind.
Please come back as we start work on bringing this bard back to it’s original shape!
3 comments
1 ping
private jet charter
January 19, 2012 at 6:51 pm (UTC -8)
Very nice style and design and great content material , nothing at all else we require : D.
Carleen Mowen
February 1, 2012 at 10:32 pm (UTC -8)
Usually I have to agree with you. Last week while I was shopping at Borders I had a very similar dilemma. I recently to buy it though.
marketing a property
February 4, 2012 at 8:34 pm (UTC -8)
I’m curious if you ever have problems with what people post? The internet never used to be like that, although it seems to be changing for the better. What do you think?
Wakesurf board z pin alternative
January 9, 2012 at 4:31 am (UTC -8)
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