Restoring an old surfboard
 

This November, I was at this hole in the wall tire place having them throw on some snow tires on some steelies for the winter. While waiting, I was looking around the lot, I a waverunner caught my eye in their back lot where they keep tires before they recycle them and behind it, a surfboard. It didn't look like a typical longboard you see, and almost looked like a wakesurf.

After the guy was done with the tires, I asked him about it. He said he didn't know anything about surfing and that it was in a car that they had picked up as a project. I asked if he was looking to get rid of it, it looked kind of shabby, but in decent enough shape. I told him I don't surf in the ocean, but do wakesurf and it might be fun to try out behind a boat, but it would be experimental at best and need some work done before that. He offered to sell it to me for $20. Sold.

It's an old Stewart board, the closest I found to a current production board of theirs is called "Therapy" which is exactly what wakesurfing is to me, liquid therapy. The difference is this has 3 glassed in fins and the current model has 5 fin boxes. It's 5'8" and 20" wide. A bit big for a wakesurf, but not unheard of. Some Soulcrafts and other surf style boards get up to 5'4" and larger.

I took it home and didn't do much besides remove all the old wax that was on it with the plans of repairing the damage to the fiberglass and throwing it behind the boat this summer and possibly taking it out to the beach and giving it go there. I plan on putting traction on it and not using wax. I'm not a big fan of wax with the mess it leaves and the owner of the boat I ride most doesn't allow it on his boat for that reason.
It's not going to be perfect, I didn't plan for it to be, but it will be surfable. It's also a good exercise in fiberflass work and board repair. I'd rather get my practice in on this before I have to do any repairs on my other boards.

Here is how it looked when I got it.
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...psjnyqziyn.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...psx3fa9r2v.jpg

This week I went to work repairing the board. I put two layers of glass on the tail tips, that was all chipped up and exposing the foam, the same with the nose. There were some other spots along the edges that had to be repaired as well and a few divots that I poured resin in to even them out. I sanded it all with my orbital sander and got it ready for paint.

I read up on painting of surfboards and found that it doesn't really matter what kind of paint you use, as long as you use the same kind of product all the way through, ie: water based, oil based, etc. My wife was refinishing a dresser for our daughter and we had some left over polyacrylic,. basically polyurethane for water based paints and stains. I decided to spray it white as a base and then possibly do some black striping on it and finally seal it.

I used Krylon duo primer/paint with a satin finish. It provides great coverage and dries flat quickly. here is how it is looking so far. I plan on taping it to do the black striped accents tomorrow, and possibly shooting one side with the polyacrylic.
Here is how it's coming along

http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...pst2hofbpn.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...pstojamiqf.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...pssmlliilv.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...psm3x3ei7z.jpg
http://i109.photobucket.com/albums/n...psbgy8a1m8.jpg

What do you think?

Cool buddy, you will likely find it entertaining. The main issue with typical shortboards, is you get quite a bit of water rolling over the rails, but they are fun behind the boat. Looks like your process worked out. The hardest part is getting rid of all the wax and then getting a good clean paint finish that will not just come off.

You can also pretty easily knock the glass on fins off with a dremmel tool and a hammer, then clean up the are and add boxes if you ever decide to do so.

Nick

That's good to know. I may look into the fin box option at some point.
After I put the paint down, I noticed that the fin on the right side of the board had started to develop a crack in the front of it. This wasn't visible until the paint went on. Yesterday I scuffed the fin and the base of the board up where I needed to lay down some glass to repair it. I glassed the fin and a little down to the base and waited until the evening for it to fully cure. Apparently either the paint wasn't 100% cured and was still soft underneath or the resin had an affect on it, because when I went to sand it down, the paint started to peel off the board where the glass was and was wet underneath. I tore all the glass off the fin and decided to wait until tonight to sand that area back down to the board itself and then repair the fin. My thought is that the resin interacting with the paint, because the paint outside the glassed area stayed down and looked solid.

Yes, if you are using polyester resin it will eat through the paint. The Styrene monomer solvent will make a gooey mess of the paint. On the other hand Xylene and Toulene are used as solvents in many spray paints. Both are also solvents for epoxy. Epoxy often does not react well with some typical spray can enamels. You can paint the surface of epoxy or polyester, but going over enamel paints with either of these will not give you good results. Polyester resin does not react well with latex paints either.

Nick

Well tha explains exactly what happened then.