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    Patching a surf board?

    I've got an old ronix koal fish surfboard that is a bit banged up and I'm wondering how best to patch it. It's mostly on the tail of the board from getting banged in to things.

    I've found various online kits but I'd like some personal opinions if you got em.

    The board looks sorta like this one: foam core, epoxy finish. Very light. Good beginner board and nice for new riders. I'd hate to throw it out.



    Here is a kit I found. Seems a bit on the small side.

    http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000TG...sr=8-5&pi=SL75

    #2
    Johnnie, the koal was made as a polyurethane/polyester and an eps/epoxy board. Pretty easy to tell the difference in core material if you can see the foam. If the foam looks like little compressed beads, like an 'styrofoam' cooler then it is EPS, and it is laminated with epoxy.
    if it looks more like craft foam then it is polyurethane. All the clear koals were gloss coated with polyester resin. So you have a both polyester and epoxy from a resin stand point. The newer ones are painted.

    Your best bet is a two part epoxy kit. Ideally, the same stuff used by manufactures. The stuff you can pick up generically will yellow and discolor in a few weeks.

    Surface prep and environment will be your most important components in getting a good fix.

    Check out the kits I provide, there is also a brief write up on ding repair.
    http://shredstixxusa.com/ding-repair...ing-repair-kit

    Nick

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      #3
      Folks are going to laugh at this, but...

      Our earliest skim-style board's nose started to delaminate. I tried various things and nothing really lasted very long. Kept having to redo. So finally I shrugged and took the caulk gun with a tube of clear silicone and pressure-filled the opening, leaving a fair amount of extra. I then smoothed the extra with a moistened finger and let it dry. Result: It's still there, perfectly waterproof, and even provides a bit of cushion to the nose in case a newbie jams it into the transom or swim platform. It's a little ghetto in its appearance, but it helps that the silicone is clear. (If I'd used white silicone I bet nobody would notice at all.)

      No, I don't have a future in surfboard repair, but this appears to be a do-it-once-and-never-worry-about-it-again solution. YMMV.

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        #4
        Nick's repair kit is pretty well thought out if you aren't doing a lot of that stuff anyway. That way you will have some extra material if you need to start over.

        Get the deluxe version which is still under $20 and if you haven't worked with resins or fiberglass before, do a little homework on YouTube University, it isn't that hard. Especially if you are wondering if you should chuck the board or not. Or give the board to some starving college kid and let him fix it. I would fix it myself and like you said, use it for newbies (like me!)
        Sent by the random thoughts from the voices in my head... Eric

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          #5
          Thanks guys. @WA, that is the approach I was likely to use before I posted here.

          Nick - that kit looks like it would be perfect. The board is clearly not styrofoam. It must be the other kind you described. It is a hard and fine foam. Overall the board is in pretty decent shape for being 4 years old, living in an ill-equipped rack, and being banged around mercilessly.

          The weird brown stripes in the pictures are due to some odd anti-aliasing effect with the fluorescent lights in my garage. But otherwise, it really is that faded.







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            #6
            Hey Johnnie, you can use a standard polyester kit to fix your board. Yes it is a polyurethane core board. Polyester resin is easier to work with in that it cures quicker and all you have to do is add the catalyst hardener.

            There are also some pretty good UV cure polyester kits out there. If you want one of my kits, I can send out polyester or epoxy or both if you want.

            Nick

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              #7
              I'll order one of your kits. Is the link you provided still the correct one?

              I've done fiberglassing before, so this isn't totally new to me. However I was doing subwoofer boxes and not surf boards. It was a while ago, but I'm pretty sure it was just polyester resin.

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                #8
                Yep the link works.

                Nick

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