Or should I take it to a pro?

Damage is from airline travel. My previous repairs consist of slapping on a few layers of cloth and epoxy over cracks so they are watertight while on vacation so that the trip is not ruined. Would want to do a better job this time around, especially since the season has ended so I have nearly 6 months with no wind ahead.

The ding is on the bottom of the board

This is not a structural thing , just a puncture wound. I would very lightly sand the small indented area and not take off any paint. Tape off the area. Then level the area perfectly. Drop by drop fill the indent with clear resin. Stab at it with a popsicle stick and make sure resin gets in and then mabee lift the sunken bit with a razor blade .Then go over it with a block and 600 wet and dry. Should hardly see it.

That will work, imax is correct just local impact damage, all it needs is to be sealed.

But as I'm not worried by looks, I'd sand it right back, remove all damaged material, (it's probably gone through the sandwich). Bog up the hole and glass over. Then some spray putty to get it flat, and if you can find it, matching paint. We have a local paint shop, that's quiet good at mixing a match and putting in a spray can.

How soft is it around?
Any loose stuff?
Yeah ding stick / solarez will work.

I don't really like that it's long... So I would remove any loose stuff, set some pu glue in there. Then a few small patches of glass yes.

If it's solid then resin may hold well.

Whichever way, simple repair.

If it is jumped it needs glass, its right in the business area
Temp repairs - especially uv resins - rarely seal well on paint unless prepped so well that then u may as well glass it

As a foiler, when I opened this thread, I expected absolute carnage If the mast track and "fin" box have at least a tenuous connection, in our world, everything else is cosmetic.

I'll defer to the experts on the correct remedy but as an amateur, I'd say if you are patient and use proper methods and materials, give it go.

Sorry your nice board got dinged.

Looks like you've got a hole that goes through the entire sandwich layer. Any fix without glassing it over would run a substantial risk of getting water into the core. The repair as Mike outlined is easy enough; the hardest part would be to restore the original look, unless you're already good at painting stuff. That's the part where pros may do a better job.

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Imax1 said..
This is not a structural thing , just a puncture wound. I would very lightly sand the small indented area and not take off any paint. Tape off the area. Then level the area perfectly. Drop by drop fill the indent with clear resin. Stab at it with a popsicle stick and make sure resin gets in and then mabee lift the sunken bit with a razor blade .Then go over it with a block and 600 wet and dry. Should hardly see it.

Please don't follow this advise. This needs a proper repair which includes glassing over the puncture.

If you have 6 months of no wind then you have plenty of time to learn how to do great repairs yourself
The hardest part is matching paint!

Winter is a great time to learn skills. my repairs have gone from comical to resalable but maybe not chargeable. A few blogs here somewhere. I'll see if I can find some.

Big jobs
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/General/Repair-Delamination?page=1


www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Windsurfing/Foiling/Foil-board-Repair-Job-The-new-nose-you-all-need?page=1

Google can help you find more examples!

great advice boardlady.com.
I had a bigger similar break with water in. The repairer plunged a screwdriver in to lever the deck back to level, dried in sun for few hours then blew in some magic (polyuerethane?) foaming agent that reacts with water, glassed over by-then surface crack and colour matched best he could.

Hope that wasn't in a stressed area though....

This is a funny example of why once you fix a few things yourself and have good hands you don't want asking for fixing advice here or you will go boardlady and sand half of the deck and glass over... Pros will do the same because they don't have patience. lol

I would remove the board air screw, lift the depressed part of the crack with some tiny suction cup ( and do laparoscopic injection with polyurethane or glassball epoxy mix (you can create very minor negative inside pressure so the stuff is sucked in with a simple household vacuum cleaner hose pressed to the vent hole). Then after all even and cured, injected a few drops of epoxy into the top carbon/glass layer to seal the crack/fibers. You can check how tight your fix is with vacuum or with a simple soap tire trick on a sunny day. If this goes to plan, you won't need any sanding, paint, glass etc.. If not working or went sour you can use what people suggested (open heart surgery).

Some interesting fixes/ideas take hours to think through and minutes to implement. Pros may do the opposite.

Cheers

And thats why pros get tired of posting here
It needs glass if it will be sailed hard, go look up tensile strength of glass vs fillers.
Considering its not hard to sand that out a little and glass it with 2x 4oz .... why not do it? All this do it the easy way responses .. to avoid some sanding and paint on a $3000 item.
Do it right.

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Mark _australia said..
And thats why pros get tired of posting here
It needs glass if it will be sailed hard, go look up tensile strength of glass vs fillers.
Considering its not hard to sand that out a little and glass it with 2x 4oz .... why not do it? All this do it the easy way responses .. to avoid some sanding and paint on a $3000 item.
Do it right.

That's the problem with being a pro. If you do the repair, it's expected to last the life of the board and even if the board fails fifteen years from now, it's going to come back on you. If the owner does it and it snaps in six months, no one hears about it maybe other than to blame someone in Thailand for building a weak-a** board. When I ask the pros on here for advice, I usually try to adhere to it. In this case, cutting a couple of patches of glass and sticking it on top is easy (probably adds five minutes or less to the task), even easier than some of the bodges mentioned.

You guys love glassing over. Talking about structural forces... Look at some old beat up boards with many spots fixed with simple white-grey putty in pretty large dents and cracks lasting forever.
Agree with Imax1 - not structural thing here. Might be worth trying laparoscopy and then glassing if the surgery doesn't go to plan. Once you start with sanding and glass over there is no going back to laparoscopy.
With that crack you can even try to squeeze in small glass cloth inside the crack spreading it a bit under the top layer of glass/carbon.

Did exactly same one inch fix on the deck of my freestyle board 3 years ago and can hardly find the spot where it was. Got damaged on the beach by the flying boom tail. Oh boy, it would have looked like a 'Nice' wacko job with sanding and glass over.

Must be a thing about fixing freestyle boards the "quick and easy" way . A friend of mine used to sail a beat-up old board just like you describe for years. It had lots of "quick" repairs, and even the fin seemed to match the look of the board perfectly. I always thought he was a great sailor (albeit not necessarily a great repairer ), until I tried his gear one day. My appreciation of his sailing skills went through the roof then - his board was probably twice the weight of my board (which was a similar model and size, but with much fewer repairs done in the "major surgery" mode). Not sure if it was the layers upon layers of "white-grey putty" repairs, or lots of water that had gotten in through the cracks - probably both, judging by the weight gain. But sure, the board kept going for many years and hundreds of sessions...

If you pay a pro repair i hope guy will restore connexion of skin and foam to avoid delam and will sand and fiber over the right way.
If you do it yourself you can go the fill it way, start by fill it with a fluid mix of resin micro and long set time resin (or with small batches to take care of exothermie) then when eps foam connected to skin fill skin with a hard putty of resin+milled fiberglass+silica tape a plastic over and let cure fully before pull plastic over. Finish with light putty, light sand light paint.

I never wanted this confliction. My bad . I have fixed many small puncture wounds with just filling with resin or resin with a little micro fibres. It's not the best , but none have failed or leaked so far. It's a clean , almost non visual fix. If it was a crunch wound , I would definately glass it. The wound to me is probably borderline in size. Much bigger and I'd glass it. It seems about an inch long. I would have up to now , thought it would be safe to just resin it up. In extreme board punishing circumstances, I would have thought the board would fail in many other spots before the repair would give up . I would not use that putty bog. Having said all that , a proper glassed repair would be best , no argument.
Ps, I've seen many board construction issues that are way worse than an inch long puncture wound. I personally can't see a square inch of delam being a problem anywhere on a board unless around a box , plug or track unless it's leaking. The amount of dry connections to save some resin , I've seen , almost makes me vomit a little. So many problems from that. Not to mention sanded through all fibres then bogged and painted over by big name brands....... To me , a little puncture wound seems just fine. Then when fixing butt join splits , a small wound seems even less.

Per the measuring app on my phone it's 3 inches long. I'd like to inject expanding under the depression, and then glass over the top.




Is this the correct foam to use? Should it be 2, 4 or 6 lb density?
www.amazon.com/Expanding-Polyurethane-Flotation-Soundproofing-Insulation/dp/B08R7TX8QJ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3_pp?crid=3TVMX00B4EWIF&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.KDm1YECa-9hsiuMuUi_sN-O6BFRtxEB_iJ4rv2HLWbADcRAVsWb8kaFbYbXsVh22cG0x_RJWijCKcMyNM5mhGtIrx_teCrHmOVLJ8CpKZBuTVDVc1CD1c30Wdx3cJPBKe4kze851qZsvSkQyMwexDoqdR0K5d8IMNyQbebiasjZQn6JxSf7acDTy7ygb8ET_enVAbpJJ8N7le32eT7OBsw.0JXZ3Zj3f0W8xhQDAk6Z31AFyXqXWyYtsPy_k2tDPe0&dib_tag=se&keywords=expanding+pour+foam&qid=1716673022&sprefix=expanding+pour+%2Caps%2C101&sr=8-3

Measuring app !!! WTF , haven't you kids heard of a ruler. If it's three inches , glass it.
Wrong foam , that's pour foam . You can't inject it , no time. The stuff starts fizzing in seconds. You COULD do it very quickly with a syringe and thick needle. You should mix it for at least 20 sec , so you don't have much time left. I wouldn't bother.
Glass it , bog it , paint it.

Discuss....

Ok, maybe injection is too hard for my skill level. I got the idea from here:
boardlady.com/injection.htm

I've tried many dodgy fixes and they always let water in, crack, need to be ripped out and done again, properly.
To go hard and proper with a fix is scary, but less scary in the long run as you know it will be sealed and strong.
Doing proper as Mark demonstrates here, is easier than stuffing around via non proper methods.
Now when i smash a nose or crack a rail, i'm not phased. I rip it all out, bog, glass and paint a pattern or something over it.
But, if you don't have a ruler, you probably don't have the tools needed. Get them if you don't want to be going to the shop, or can't for repairs all the time. I've smashed boards one day and been riding them the next fixed. No shops near me so this is good. And i anticipate many more dings and holes while learning.

A steel ruler is a must have.
After measuring,.... it is the best paint can opener. Good for lightweight levering, paint mixing, scraping, fly swatting if your fast, and, also good for measuring. $ 10 for a good one. As above, If you don't own a ruler, board repair is not for you.

2 lb is a good analog to the foam core.
But before we go there, how deep is the dent? Maybe someone more experienced can tell us the odds of the foam being seriously damaged enough to cause a point of future delam. A slight depression gives a an easy way to put a few pieces of glass without making much of a high spot.
No worries about how you measured. I'm sure you intend to assemble the right tools before beginning extensive surgery

You could use the phone as a sanding block.

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Imax1 said..
You could use the phone as a sanding block.

whats the sanding app called, is it available on android

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cammd said..

Imax1 said..
You could use the phone as a sanding block.

whats the sanding app called, is it available on android

Put the phone on vibrate , it would be like a mini orbital sander.

I ended up fixing it myself. After buying the 2 part pour foam, epoxy repair kit, gloves, sanding block and sandpaper it probably cost about the same as paying a professional to repair it. And I still have to paint it.