QLD
2315 posts
Pulled out an old board to repair today, noticed a bit of a soft spot just in front of the mast track. Opened it up to find no foam just empty space there beneath the hard foam for 2 inches then soft foam. The hard foam was a bit messy there. This soft spot never used to be there started shortly before i stopped using board. But I have also encountered the exact same thing on other boards. Why? is there supposed to be gap there or is it a case of disappearing foam. This board is a "semi production" carbon epoxy, others i have seen it on were epoxy customs.
WA
325 posts
Where do you store these boards? Is it in a shed where you keep oil/petrol, boat motors and this kinda stuff? Polystyrene reats with a fair few things so it might be related to that...
QLD
2315 posts
No none of the boards have had any chemical exposure. I've also seen an epoxy board repaired with polystyrene it dosent look like that at all.
NSW
1731 posts
If the board was repaired with polyester resins then that is the cause, they eat foam like nothing else. Even cleaning a board, for some reason, with solvents like acetone can cause the foam to get eaten away. That sort of stuff just hunts out foam and will get through any crack. Barring those cases though, i'm unsure.
QLD
2315 posts
What i'm saying is I have seen the result of foam being eaten away and this does not look like that (brown globby mess). The board has never had a repair previously so hasnt had any means of exposure to chemicals anyway apart from during manufacture.
QLD
2315 posts
Actually it dosent, least not that I can find (and i've read through her site quite a few times in the past).
QLD
78 posts
As epoxy sets it releases a large amount of heat and can easily melt polystyrene. Packing a mast track or fin box in a "slurry" of epoxy may lead to local melting of surrounding foam.
Out of curiosity I recently cut open a de-laminated f2. There were small voids around the fin box, so I thought maybe this was the cause. I'm no expert but its just a theory.
Mal
QLD
2315 posts
Possibly. Being a production board you could also excuse sloppy cutting of the blank but that dosent really explain customs. Could it be built in so that it gives some cushioning of the mast track? Obviously it had always been there and was sound while the hard foam was good (i'd sailed it for 8 years or so and overloaded the board a fair bit with sail size and it held together). There are plenty of hollow boards around but it's just not really what you expect to see when you open a foam cored board.
NSW
156 posts
While we are discussing repairs can anyone tell me the correct paint to use to match the bottom of a 2006 starboard that is the white matt finish. (Yes I know its white and matt... but type, brand, are these wet and dry sanded or not?)
Thanks
Geoff
