This old warrior sure takes a beating. This is the second time I've stuck this board's nose in the reef. Both times doing a finishing top turn on a hollow, shoulder-high inside section into about a foot and a half of water. Stuck the nose, which I'm usually quick enough to bail on in order to unload the board, but this time I actually felt the board stop Even the Kevlar rails are no match for Okinawa reef


Dings are a part of life, and I have loads of other boards to ride, but bummed because I hate doing repair...


Anyway, here's how I get started. I use a high volume, adjustable aquarium pump in the vent plug to push water out. This pump can make as much as much as 0.035 Mpa (5 psi) on a completely closed board, but I don't usually put more than about 0.015 Mpa (2.2 psi) in a board. With this big ding, it'll only develop 0.016 Mpa (2.3 psi) at full boogie. Not only does this push any water out of the board, but air flow through the space is the only practical way to dry the board, IMO. When it stops pushing water (about 2 minutes in this case), I'll let it run for a couple of days to dry any water. Not real sure if facing the ding down works better, but it feels right...LOL Maybe if the board was full of water.





The pain.


The system.



The set up.




The pressure.



The bubbles



In a few days, I'll dissect it, and see how bad it really is.

Yeah you made a good job of that . Nice work with the air pressure to push water out , easy colour to fix white , we have lots of reef and coral , I need 3 boards to stay in the water each day , due to dings

That's a bummer Oki as that board is your workhorse, right? Hope it's surfable quick.

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surfinJ said..
That's a bummer Oki as that board is your workhorse, right? Hope it's surfable quick.

Yea, but I have another one, only in carbon Lately it's been bumpin' and I've been riding an 8'8"x31x120L board. Fighting with the width of the board vs. going really fast on really steep sections. Changed it up to a quad for this morning, and suddenly it's magic.

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Tardy said..
Yeah you made a good job of that . Nice work with the air pressure to push water out , easy colour to fix white , we have lots of reef and coral , I need 3 boards to stay in the water each day , due to dings

If you look closely at the right side of the nose in the third pic, you'll see the white with gray stripes is just a little off

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OkiWild said..

Tardy said..
Yeah you made a good job of that . Nice work with the air pressure to push water out , easy colour to fix white , we have lots of reef and coral , I need 3 boards to stay in the water each day , due to dings

If you look closely at the right side of the nose in the third pic, you'll see the white with gray stripes is just a little off

easy ,mask tape those strips up and get yourself a grey spray can it will have some charter now ..should see my placid ..I just finished spraying up the black rail ..kinda hit a reef ..I was under water getting hammered ...

Wait... you guys fix dings? I thought that's what stickers were for