how to fix a ding

How to fix a ding on a surfboard.

You have a new board and after only a few sessions you find a crack, or worse yet, you drop it at your house and get a ding. So how do you fix a ding? There are really only 2 ways. 1. Get it repaired at a shop. This usually costs $35-$50. 2. do it yourself for about $15. The great thing about doing it yourself is that once you buy the original materials, some of them can be reused. Plus if you ever have a major repair that needs to be done, you can do it yourself. Some major repairs can be expensive at a shop, so its best to know how to repair the board yourself.

Materials for most dings:

- Epoxy or Fiberglass. - depends on what type of board you have. If you have an epoxy board, get epoxy. If you have a poly board, get fiberglass. Pretty simple. I recommend that you get a premixed solution at your surf shop. If you are using epoxy and its not premixed, you must be sure to mix it according to the directions, otherwise it will not cure (dry) and will remain sticky.

- Gloves - this is toxic stuff, plus its really sticky. This is also a reason why you want to do this outside, it smells bad, or at least open a window.

- Scissors

- Sand Paper

- Fiberglass cloth

- Duct Tape

- Wax paper

- Paint brush

Thats it! If you buy a surfboard repair kit for $10-15, it will come with resin (epoxy or fiberglass), scissors, sand paper, and fiberglass cloth. This is all you really need to buy. And this kit can usually be used on 4-5 dings. So you will get your moneys worth.

How to repair a ding. I am going to show you some pics of a ding I recently repaired on one of my surfboards. I will show a few pictures as well. The ding on my board started as a crack, that I did not notice, but it must have been there for a few weeks because when I did notice it, there were 2 cracks, with rotting foam underneath.

As you can see from the pic, I have two holes in my board. My ding was only 2 cracks but the foam underneath was rotted, so it had to be removed. Here is how I repaired it.

1. Make sure the board is dry. Let it sit for a week if the foam is wet. Then when its dry, clean it well, clearing wax/sand/salt away.

2. Take sand paper and/or a sharp knife or razor blade and get rid of all of the loose glass. Get rid of any crust or loose debris. In this case, I had to cut around the rotting foam. So I cut the glass around the foam, then remove the foam that was rotted. You do not want to remove foam unless you have to. In this case, I had no choice.

3. Since I had to take out some foam, I need to fill it back in. To do this you need a filler. If you do not have filler, you can cut up fiberglass cloth and mix it with your resin. So for this step, I put small pieces of fiberglass cloth and epoxy into the holes to fill it up. I then put some wax paper over it so that it would dry flat and some duct tape on the side so the resin wouldnt drip onto the bottom of the board. As you can see from the picture below, the holes are now filled in.

4. Once this is done, you need to let it dry. Epoxy dries quickly, but I let it sit overnight to be sure. Once it was dry I put on fiberglass cloth. If you only have a small ding, you do not need to do this. I did it because my ding was large and I have to cut away foam. To put on the cloth, you cut the cloth in the shape of your ding, but make it about .5 to 1 inch bigger on all sides so that you overlap the glass with the cloth. Then, place the cloth on newspaper and pour resin on it. Make sure that the cloth is soaked in resin, then place it on the ding. Again, I used wax paper to make sure it was flat. Then I let it dry overnight.

5. Now its time for the hotcoat. This simply means, taking a brush, like a paintbrush, and painting resin over the ding. This helps smooth it out. Once this is dry, you can sand it down to make it smooth and look nice. And thats it. The holes are filled in and the ding is fixed.