Surfboard Crack

Question
I have made numerous repairs on my son's surfboard.   However,  today he came home with a crack which extended across the bottom of the surfboard.  The crack is a hairline type crack which extends across the board.  It has comprised the structure of the board.  It feels that if we applied pressure, the board will crack in half.  Is this a repairable problem.  If so, how do I repair.  Do attempt to widen the hairline crack by digging it out and then apply resin and foam.

Answer
Hi Brian,

Well I would guess that it all depends on if the crack is in the middle of the board or close to the nose or tail. Either way, you can try and fix it, but the board will never really be perfect if that crack has any kind of depth and is near the middle or tail. The best case scenario would be if the crack was towards the nose of the board... Regardless, depending on the depth of the crack (does it extend all the way through the foam or just through the glass?) you could get some EPOXY resin and Q-cell filler or other high density filler (often found at surf shops or west marine, West Systems 404 filler is great stuff.) and give it a shot. If the crack does extend into the foam, and you can open the crack by pulling on either side, try mixing up a batch of filler and then pulling the crack apart and pouring the resin/filler in. Pull everything back together and use some clamps and strips of wood to hold things together, make sure to clean off any excess that comes squirting out. Once the filler has dried sand the area of the board around the crack with some 50 grit sand paper. get some 4 and 6oz fiberglass cloth and using the epoxy resin glass over the crack, making sure to extend at least 4-6 inches on the sides of the crack. Do three layers of glass on each side, 6oz on the bottom and 4oz for the two top layers, be sure to use just enough resin to soak into the cloth and not much more, cus that stuff is extremely hard to sand...make sure that when you cut the cloth to shape, you round all the edges, and make the layers progressively larger as you go up.

After all that has dried sand sand sand , its going to take a while...

If the crack doesn't extend into the foam you can skip the filler part and move right onto the glassing...

Hopefully this helps a bit. If you need more info, or if none of this makes any sense at all drop me another line and I'll see what I can do!



P.S. I am assuming that you have had some experience with fiberglass, if you haven't, don't expect it to come out perfect, take your time, but just keep in mind that it might be easier just to buy a new board for him. I recommend using Epoxy Resin as it is much stronger and lighter than the regular fiberglass resin. West Marine's West System Epoxy Resin seems to be the best stuff that I have come across...

Good Luck!