Heel Dents

[svantuyl]

I removed the deck pads from a classic board that is polyester on a Clark Foam blank. The board had compression dents in the heel areas. The deepest dent is 3/8". When I press hard on these areas with my thumb, they are not soft. They are rigid. I do not see any signs of broken glass fibers or delamination.

I will try to include a photo.

I have been thinking about:

A. Do nothing, except replace the pads with dual density pads.
B. Reinforce the dented area with three layers of E-glass and epoxy, which I have on hand, and then replace the pads.
C. Fill the dents first with Divinycell and epoxy micro balloon mix, leaving the original skin intact. Then, cover with three layers of glass, and new pads.

Do any of you have further recommendations?

[isobars]

If you enjoy glassing boards, WTH; go for it. I'd rather clean out my gutters, so I'd slap on some thicker pads AND go clean out my gutters. This isn't a fragile EPS core, so it will ignore significant heel dents for a LOOONG time. I've owned at least a dozen poly/Clark Bonzers, and many developed heel dents which I completely ignored with no ill effects. Heck, the most comfortable footbed I ever had was a set of pads contoured to my feet; now you have them.

Filling the dents will achieve little besides leveling them ... i.e., it's just cosmetic. An alternative I used on a very expensive EPS custom board was gluing a pair of hand-formed stainless steel plate over the soft spots. They weighed next to nothing, and I could feel them flexing juuuuust a bit under hard heel pressure ... just what I wanted (a rigid bridge would have simply transferred all the pressure to the edges, spreading the damage.) The thick slab of adhesive filled the slight void to spread the pressure well. Never gave it a second thought.

If you like that board a lot and ever get to a Gorge swap meet, you can probably find a near-mint backup for a song. I've seen them offered for everything from free to $2500 (guess how much luck the latter seller had, as $5 to $25 is much more common).

[svantuyl]

Thank you, Mike. Since I don't see any broken glass and it isn't soft, I think I will ignore the dents. They are actually kind of comfortable.

[cgoudie1]

Heal dents and glass boards...we've all had'm. I gave up a board last
season, that had dents deeper than yours, but it was probably rideable for several more years.
Eventually, they will fracture somewhere in or around the footstrap area.
But even then the board will sort of hold together on the stringers.
If you really loved the board, I guess you could sand down through the fiber
glass, and then fill in the dent in the core with expanding foam, then
sand that down (which is easy), then 3 layers of S glass over the top,
and sand down(which is not easy). Or, even lay in an extra layer of carbon
(but that would need to be much larger than the dents).

If you're the kind of person who enjoys that kind of work, then by all means,
but if you're just doing it because you can't afford a new board, listen
to Mike, go to a swap, and grab some $40 glass board of a similar shape,
and have fun, or slap an additional set of pads on the thing and ride it
into the ground(er, water).

Good luck,

-Craig

[svantuyl]

Thanks, Craig. I really appreciate the input, and I like your description of how to do a proper repair. For right now, I think I will spent more than the cost of a swap meet board on a big cushy pad, and leave the dents.

[hilton08]

Heel dents in polyester/Clark board = no problem.
Just makes it more comfortable to sail.

Heel dents in epoxy/EPS board = big problem.
Need to fix it right away.

[westender]

Don't wanna use Gorilla Glue??

[svantuyl]

I have heard about injecting Gorilla Glue into soft spots and delams. I suppose it could work for filling a surface dent. This doesn't really feel soft or delaminated. The dent actually makes a comfortable foot bed for my back foot. Simply covering it with a new pad sounds appealing. I will think of the dents on this board as a nice feature, rather than a flaw.