After being on holiday for some time i noticed my Fanatic Flyrace wood veneer has blown up and also cracked around the vent plug, whether the crack is a result of the bubble or the bubble was made by the small crack then blowing up im not 100% certain but being i was camping it appears the board either got damaged whilst on the roof of my car or whilst sitting against a fence during the day at the camp site, unfortunately i did not have the vent plug undone when i should have it would appear, im now trying to ascertain what action would be best to get the board usable again, it appears to not have taken on loads of water or anything but i reckon some got in there though,

Any ideas?, im thinking drilling multiple holes and making epoxy pylons, clamping down the area with a phone book, vacuum?.........council cleanup! etc

That sucks!

While I leave the vent closed in winter, in the warmer part of the year (Oct to March) I always unscrew the vent after every session, regardles of the temperature that day.

This gives me a bit more piece of mind, especially in Melbourne, where a hot day or rapid temperature change can seemingly come out of nowhere.

Nevertheless, I've heard several people tell newbies to close their vent and just forget about it.

Perhaps coming from windsurfing background, where vents have been in use for a long time, gives more awareness of the importance of leaving the vent open when not in use.

Mate, thats a pain.

My mal is epoxy and my sons short board is also (surftech). I think the construction is similar to the fanatics and if you need a repairer Gary of Wizstix at Long Jetty does repairs on epoxy boards. Did a great job on my young blokes board.
Also found this detailed description of construction, which might help.
boardlady.com/anatomy.htm

Good luck

OK so today my mate and I got busy with stage 1 of trying to fix this bad boy, first of all we got the vacuum onto the vent plug area and tried sucking the bubble in which i reckon worked pretty good and gave me some hope of getting this board back to looking good again, being that the vent plug still leaks the vacuum method only stayed good for around 30 seconds then it bubbled back up so we started to fix the vent plug leak first.



Being that we couldn't work out how to glue such a small leak shut we got the dremel out and opened the vent plug leak area up a bit.







To keep it neat the exposed foam was coloured in with an artline pen to get things back to black.



Next we got the araldite ultra clear out and went to town with it around the general area.



To make it as good as possible we decided to cut out some deck grip to go around the newly fixed araldited area to ensure water wont get in if it still leaks a bit.






Im probably going to make the deck grip peice larger so it will look like this plus the vent hole added.

I've got one of the white version of these boards and the deck on mine got a couple of large bubbles in it, I took the the vent plug out and left it in the sun for a few hours, then put the plug back in and put it in the shade, seems ok now. I was amazed buy the amount of air they push out as they heat up.

Hi. I had a similar but smaller problem. Drilled a couple of holes and pumped it full of epoxy with a syringe. Clamped it down and let it set. Rock solid now. The only problem was the epoxy that oozed out when I applied the pressure to hold it. If you put tape over the area before you do this the oozed epoxy will stick to the tape and then just peel the tape off. Just left with a couple of small drill holes.

Dont buy boards with plugs, Frikkkkking factory boards suck

Thanks for the ideas, the issue with polyurethane foam im not sure about is i plan to vacuum the veneer back down to the original foam after i insert the adhesive and i may just get it all in the vacuum cleaner instead, i don't plan on having any big bubbles or gaps left after the vacuum process, of course Ive never worked with it so im just assuming here.

Im going to have a look what Bunnings, Spotlight and Clark rubber have i think.

hilly said...

Warddy said...
Dont buy boards with plugs, Frikkkkking factory boards suck

Interesting rant Every custom epoxy sup I have seen has a vent. Are you talking polyester sup? Gee whiz that would be light, not!!

laguna bay customs dont

We have hit a snag unfortunately when Selleys said you CAN use Kwik Grip on polyurathene foam, laminated plastics and wood I had no idea they actually meant DONT use this on polyurathene foam, laminated plastics and wood.

"if it's Selleys it works".....................%$@#&

Almost brings a tear to the eye seeing that beautiful board all twisted up like that.

Fingers crossed for you that you get her all straight agin.

DJ

Craft foam and polyurethane foam, i saw foam twice and thought that this would be OK, it wont stick anyway so it was never going to work but now i have a the new space age gold ball effect going on which will surely make the board faster LOL.

boardlady.com/injection.htm

The board lady sums it up i guess.