Repair your own boards, like a Boss..

Hi Barn, thanks for posting this info in response to my earlier post. Luckily my two patches are nothing close to a snapped board.

Barn, the method you described is super cool and better than the one from Boardlady. A PhD student would modify it a bit to avoid using any metal tools and have more control...
Then it's perfect and i'll use it for my future repairs... :)

Here is what I would do to make it simpler and more streamlined...

Modification on how you prepare the bottom layer:

I would take a strip(s) of glass/carbon of the right size and lay it on a piece of glass/flat plastic bag/an instant wrap, and cover it with epoxy and let it dry. You will get a nice thin, sharp, flexy, manageable piece of material afterwards which you can cover with more epoxy and squeeze pretty easy under your shell and over the EPS foam. You can even play with injectable polyurethane foam if you wish it to be squeezed more from the bottom up. You can even flip the board and add hang some light weights to insure it presses nicely against the bottom layer..
After this procedure everything is simple.. add divinicell, cover with more glass/carbon..

Must get nervous laminating a whole PVC sheet onto a board..

I am not fazed by the 'old guard' not embracing new, superior solutions. It's human nature to stick with what your good at, right or wrong.. The caveman that changed his Flint technique each week while trying to keep up, usually went hungry..

Old skills or ideas never get abandoned, they get forgotten..

So I will put all the repairing methods to the test is some filmed experiments over the next few weeks.. But until then, in honor of human stubbornness and bad ideas, 9 minutes of flight attempts..

#at=482

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! to anyone attempting to do a board repair like this.
This is not the strongest way, yes it might hold up for a while but it will break earlier than a better repair.
just doing a straight line of glass across the board creates a stiff breaking point.
It's a bit like scoring a straight line along a piece of glass before you snap it.
the top glass should be curved or a diamond shape to spread/feather out the stiffness/load.
I fully concur with Mark Australia

The my chosen shape of this particular repair is not the point of the method. But In my defense..

There is no straight line, it's a tapered repair, as in each layer of glass extends further than the last. Plus, in theory, the repaired layer is no stronger, or weaker than the original board.. Because the repair is built just like the board..


In theory, if there was a long strip of EPS backed PVC repaired like this it would bend with the same characteristics as the original..


So this is why I went with the visually straight line, along with the fact it's just a cheap freeride board, this seemed the best option.. Otherwise I am half way to replacing the whole deck!!

Below I have drawn the repair cutouts I am assuming is being suggested over the straight.. I have also shown how the glass is stepped, so any forces or 'weak or strong' points are distributed over a 20cm area...


If you go to bunnings, there are lengths of pine that have had the Knots removed and the wood is finger joined back together, the cut is a straight line..

The join in a carbon mast, is a straight line..

Interesting thread. I tend to agree that poking glass under the bottom layer seems a bit agricultural but it would be interesting to see what sort of shape that bond was actually in once it was set and if there was any real strength in it. That aside, if my memory of composite construction serves me correctly I believe that the bottom layer of glass would actually be in compression after landing a jump and the top layer would be in tension. As such the strength of the bottom layer of glass would not contribute very much in comparison to the top layer.