# Top sheet repair advice



## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Today some skier decided to ski right into me from behind without a chirp to notify me of his proximity so that I might avoid him. Anyway, his ski ran across the top sheet of my board and sliced off sections of my top sheet exposing wood underneath. The top sheet isnt lifted or separated bit the wood is exposed. 

Epoxy is required, but do you think the standard loctite marine epoxy that binds wood and cures white will suffice, or do you think I need something a bit more flexible. The damage is on the nose of my board just north of the boards contact point.

My thoughts were yo epoxy the exposed areas, sand down to get them flush. Still thinking about a strat to color the epoxy close to the color of the board. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

















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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

Slightly expensive but appears to be the best. Will last a while but from data sheet has an unmixed shelf life of 2 years. I'm about to do a few topsheet chip repairs with this product. Will attach a few pictures soon.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

Craig51 said:


> Slightly expensive but appears to be the best. Will last a while but from data sheet has an unmixed shelf life of 2 years. I'm about to do a few topsheet chip repairs with this product. Will attach a few pictures soon.


It's what I use. Works awesome. 

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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

G/Flex 650:nerd:


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Sounds good. I'll go with the g/flex. What color does it cure and can it be sanded after it cures? Thanks.

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## SEWiShred (Jan 19, 2019)

For a metallic finish, add mica powder to clear epoxy. For a less metallic finish, they sell dyes for epoxy. You can find them on amazon for around $10 a piece. I repaired my bright yellow 2010 Flow Quantum top deck damage with yellow dye and it turned out pretty great. Just mix the dye in when you mix the two parts of the epoxy. Might want to watch a few videos on how to do it on YouTube, but matching the color is not too difficult. Just remember that it will probably dry a lighter color than what you mix. 

You will just need one drop, if that, to get enough black epoxy to fix the color. You won't be adding a lot to get what you need as long as you use clear epoxy.


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## SlvrDragon50 (Mar 25, 2017)

mriviecc said:


> Sounds good. I'll go with the g/flex. What color does it cure and can it be sanded after it cures? Thanks.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


It's a kinda yellowish color. Not egregiously yellow. As mentioned, you can dye it. It can be sanded.


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

I'm looking for more of a matte finish, so I'll go with the dyes.i am concerned since the g/flex cures a yellowish color and how that will effect the color might be an issue. 

I think I'll get the g/flex 655. Prethickened so itll be easier to spread around without dripping. I'll pick up one black, blue, and white dyes and try to get the color as close as possible. 

Think the 655 instead of the 650 will be an issue? I looked at a few vids and the 655 is just doped with some silicon to thicken it up, but it still cures a yellowish color. If it comes out crappy after sanding, I can always just paint the area. I'm more concerned with getting the epoxy on the exposed areas. The matching color isn just ne being anal about it. 

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## SEWiShred (Jan 19, 2019)

You might be ok since you are going black but it definitely wouldn't work with lighter colors. Paint will just flake off, it doesn't do well with flex. I usually do smaller repairs and just use regular old clear epoxy. But you need the flex for an area that large. You could always get some g/flex (or the total boat stuff that's the same thing but cheaper) and some dye, and mix it and see if it ends up getting close. It's not like once you mix this all together you have to use it.


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm just going to get the g/flex 605 since itll be easier to mix the dye in, black, blue, and white dyes to play with, and test out the coloring to get as close as possible. I'm going after a very dark midnight blue coloring, which technically is 10% green and 20%blue in rgb. So if the resin cures slightly yellow, adding black will push the color more green, since yellow and black yields green shades; add blue and get something closer to dark midnight blue. The delam is in the nose section past the contact points but I agree that g/flex is the best way to go. I'll post pics once I get the mats and do the repair. If the coloring turns out to be a complete failure, I'll just leave it with the un dyed epoxy. Thanks for the suggestions

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## timmytard (Mar 19, 2009)

mriviecc said:


> Today some skier decided to ski right into me from behind without a chirp to notify me of his proximity so that I might avoid him. Anyway, his ski ran across the top sheet of my board and sliced off sections of my top sheet exposing wood underneath. The top sheet isnt lifted or separated bit the wood is exposed.
> 
> Epoxy is required, but do you think the standard loctite marine epoxy that binds wood and cures white will suffice, or do you think I need something a bit more flexible. The damage is on the nose of my board just north of the boards contact point.
> 
> ...




Pretty sure that's not wood.

Smear some wax on it, it'll be fine


TT


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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

mriviecc said:


> Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'm just going to get the g/flex 605 since itll be easier to mix the dye in, black, blue, and white dyes to play with, and test out the coloring to get as close as possible. I'm going after a very dark midnight blue coloring, which technically is 10% green and 20%blue in rgb. So if the resin cures slightly yellow, adding black will push the color more green, since yellow and black yields green shades; add blue and get something closer to dark midnight blue. The delam is in the nose section past the contact points but I agree that g/flex is the best way to go. I'll post pics once I get the mats and do the repair. If the coloring turns out to be a complete failure, I'll just leave it with the un dyed epoxy. Thanks for the suggestions
> 
> Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


You look like you only have to apply a thickness of around 1mm to the damage. I used to work in the fibreglass industry applying laminate, filler and clear coats for a number of years when I was a sparrow......, which was a long time ago.:nerd: The clear coat is a thin top layer (normally painted on) of only 1 to 2mm over the sanded filler and laminate layers. There is no volume fill here to worry about, just a reapplication of the top coat on your snowboard that has been chipped off by a forced impact. The big trick here will be in blending the new clear coat g/flex 650 back into the initial top sheet so as not to see the old and new area's (ie application edgeline). This is done by wet sanding/polishing with soft pads the 2 area's back together looking like new.

I'd definitely fix this up, but I'm a fair bit OCD....., probably similar to you???


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Craig51 said:


> You look like you only have to apply a thickness of around 1mm to the damage. I used to work in the fibreglass industry applying laminate, filler and clear coats for a number of years when I was a sparrow......, which was a long time ago.:nerd: The clear coat is a thin top layer (normally painted on) of only 1 to 2mm over the sanded filler and laminate layers. There is no volume fill here to worry about, just a reapplication of the top coat on your snowboard that has been chipped off by a forced impact. The big trick here will be in blending the new clear coat g/flex 650 back into the initial top sheet so as not to see the old and new area's (ie application edgeline). This is done by wet sanding/polishing with soft pads the 2 area's back together looking like new.
> 
> I'd definitely fix this up, but I'm a fair bit OCD....., probably similar to you???


You think sanding with increasing grit sandpaper, wet at the higher grit, would get it done? Thanks for the advice.

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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

mriviecc said:


> Craig51 said:
> 
> 
> > You look like you only have to apply a thickness of around 1mm to the damage. I used to work in the fibreglass industry applying laminate, filler and clear coats for a number of years when I was a sparrow......, which was a long time ago.<img src="http://www.snowboardingforum.com/images/SnowboardingForum_2015/smilies/tango_face_glasses.png" border="0" alt="" title="Nerd" class="inlineimg" /> The clear coat is a thin top layer (normally painted on) of only 1 to 2mm over the sanded filler and laminate layers. There is no volume fill here to worry about, just a reapplication of the top coat on your snowboard that has been chipped off by a forced impact. The big trick here will be in blending the new clear coat g/flex 650 back into the initial top sheet so as not to see the old and new area's (ie application edgeline). This is done by wet sanding/polishing with soft pads the 2 area's back together looking like new.
> ...


You go down to 1200 and then polish up with a buff. You need special firm and soft pads for a disk sander. Get these from fibreglass supplier stores. You can also probably use a headlight restoration kit which has this soft pad you put into a drill and go down to wet sand of like 400, 600, 1200 and then polish off. All the grits, buffs, polish, sealers are in the kit and they velcro on to the pad. I've done cloudy polycarbonate headlights and they come up looking pretty damn new. You can buy these kits for about $Au16 from aliexpress. You can minimise the sanding by setting up repair and masking it flat over and against the undamaged area which will reduce the fresh application line. Use fineline tape. So what you are doing is rebuilding a clear coat over the chipped damaged area to bring it back up to a new flat topsheet. This is not hard to do if you know what you are doing and it will look pretty sweet but most people won't go to this level. I also use automotive acrylic clear that I touch on chips on peoples boards they bring in for repair. This is a very quick way to seal and works okay but doesn't bring it back to that mint look. Watch some videos on headlight restoration. You're polishing plastic.


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Craig51 said:


> You go down to 1200 and then polish up with a buff. You need special firm and soft pads for a disk sander. Get these from fibreglass supplier stores. You can also probably use a headlight restoration kit which has this soft pad you put into a drill and go down to wet sand of like 400, 600, 1200 and then polish off. All the grits, buffs, polish, sealers are in the kit and they velcro on to the pad. I've done cloudy polycarbonate headlights and they come up looking pretty damn new. You can buy these kits for about $Au16 from aliexpress. You can minimize the sanding by setting up repair and masking it flat over and against the undamaged area which will reduce the fresh application line. Use fine line tape. So what you are doing is rebuilding a clear coat over the chipped damaged area to bring it back up to a new flat topsheet. This is not hard to do if you know what you are doing and it will look pretty sweet but most people won't go to this level. I also use automotive acrylic clear that I touch on chips on peoples boards they bring in for repair. This is a very quick way to seal and works okay but doesn't bring it back to that mint look. Watch some videos on headlight restoration. You're polishing plastic.


Thanks. I really appreciate the advice. My initial thoughts were to mask off the area around the chip on the surrounding top sheet, side edge, and even the base, lay down the epoxy in a thin layer to cover the damaged area; remove the mask before it cures. Once cured, I'd get to sanding as you suggested. I hadn't considered the headlamp restoration kit, which is a brilliant idea. They don't cost so much, and I can use my electric drill for the sanding and buffing disk. I did check my local Home Depot, and saw that they have a few restoration kits, I'll pick up. I'm just waiting on the G/Flex to arrive to get started. I'm more optimistic than I initially was about this eyesore of a chip. Thanks so much for the suggestions. The G/Flex isn't due to arrive until the 26th so I'll post pics once i've finished the repair on that area. Until then, it's my old board that I'll be riding, which I should have been using anyway on an overcrowded holiday weekend.


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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

So repaired my Fish yesterday. Had a 20mm rail chip (TBH not sure how it even happened) in between the bindings on the topsheet edge. Used West System G/Flex 650 epoxy which is a highly flexible resin that will withstand vibration and flex typical with snowboarding. The 125ml size bottle size is plenty big enough for all minor repairs (this gives you 250ml of epoxy). It has a shelf life of 2 years before it may degrade.










1. Clean the effected area (sand it down or pick off any raised are's you cannot reseal back down/acetone clean),










2. Mask off around damaged area,










3. Mix up epoxy (hint it's frigging expensive $$$$$$......, so don't mix up too much you will not use),










4. Epoxy has a viscosity similar to honey and a gel life of 45mins, so plenty of time,










5. Use tape to lay epoxy flat trying to replicate the flatness of the topsheet (this will mean less sanding as the overflow will be squashed over the initial taped masked off area),
6. It takes 24 hours to fully cure, so wait any work prior to this may cause the epoxy to pop out of the crack. G/Flex is sandy colour in depth but for shallow applications it will look close to clear/opaque,
7. Remove the tape and sand back the side edge with 320 on a block. I then use velcro backed wet sanding pads I grab from Aliexpress in bulk 600/800/1200/2000/3000. Here you are blending the repair back into the topsheet so you will lightly be touching both area as you bring down the height of the repair to the topsheet (you are taking off a tiny fraction of a mm here with each sand only taking a couple of seconds to do). This is a precision job so just work slow.










8. Now the best part....., get the polish pad on and some cutting compound and buff in up (only need about 20 seconds of polishing.










9. A polish finish is easy but with the Fish it has a satin finish so I had to run coarse scotchbrite from tip to tail around the repair to blend it into the satin finish.










10. Finished. Looks pretty sweet (the photo's have the damage magnified so it does not look as pronounced from normal view).


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Nice job. That looks really good. I'm just waiting on the g/flex from Amazon to get started. Have the sandpaper and headlight kit. Have dyes for the epoxy - my biggest concern is getting the sandy yellow epoxy to a black color - I plan on testing the dying out first. Have my drill ready and have already masked off the area. Seeing how yours came out makes me pretty optimistic this is going to work well. 

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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Did you let the epoxy cure before removing the masking tape, or did you just let it set a bit then removed the tape?

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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

mriviecc said:


> Did you let the epoxy cure before removing the masking tape, or did you just let it set a bit then removed the tape?
> 
> Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk


Just leave it for 24 hours as it has a slow cure time. You can pull the resin out/partially out if you play with it. Once its cured it's rock solid. Just added another photo from distance.


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

If you wouldn't mind giving me one more bit of advice. I'm a little conflicted on where to mask off the damage. I initially had the entire area masked off, just beyond where you see the top sheet begin to depress outward towards the edge. It's the white line like impression around that entire area. I basically laid down masking tape at that white line. So I'd be laying down epoxy over my original top sheet as well as the exposed fiberglass. Now I'm thinking not to mask off so far from the exposed fiberglass, and just mask off the two small areas around the exposed fiberglass and make the patch level with the impressed top sheet. What would you suggest is the best area to mask this off? Thanks so much.


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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

mriviecc said:


> If you wouldn't mind giving me one more bit of advice. I'm a little conflicted on where to mask off the damage. I initially had the entire area masked off, just beyond where you see the top sheet begin to depress outward towards the edge. It's the white line like impression around that entire area. I basically laid down masking tape at that white line. So I'd be laying down epoxy over my original top sheet as well as the exposed fiberglass. Now I'm thinking not to mask off so far from the exposed fiberglass, and just mask off the two small areas around the exposed fiberglass and make the patch level with the impressed top sheet. What would you suggest is the best area to mask this off? Thanks so much.


You have to lightly sand the untouched/undamaged top sheet for the new resin to stick on top. So just mask past the smashed up edge so you will have new resin going on top. You will bring this raised repair line back down to the original topsheet height when you sand back. I laid tape over mind but this may be hard with your damage as it's over a wider area and you may upset the height level too low. What ever you can do to get this repair line flat to the topsheet and prevent sanding is good though. When you sand with wet 800 it cuts in fairly good. You don't need much time on the sander only a few seconds to blend it in between each grade. The 800 should bring it down to the right height while the 1200 and 2000 will polish the scratches out. The polish pad will then make all the scratches disappear completely.


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Great. Thanks for the advice. I'll post pics once I'm finished.


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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

mriviecc said:


> Great. Thanks for the advice. I'll post pics once I'm finished.


I've got a Metabo 18V cordless drill with side handle which helps to counter the weight of the drill down on the job. I've got a variety of smaller air tools but the velcro pad shaft was too big for them. When I was in the fibreglass industry we use a disk sander/polisher with a large pad which gives you so much control over the balance of the tool and this prevents the danger in sanding too deep. If you do this it just means you will have to refill back up with a little resin to lift up the topsheet layer again. You won't need much speed from the drill, keep the sand wet as you are working on it.


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## mriviecc (Feb 18, 2015)

Sorry for the belated reply. I was out of town and the materials for the repair didn't arrive before I left so I couldn't get started until yesterday. I finished the repair, and in my opinion it turned out way above my initial expectations. I think I even got the color close enough to the original so that the repair area wouldn't stand out. My steps were as follows: 

1: I masked off the area and the side edge with painters tape, encompassing the entire area. 
2: 1:1 G650 epoxy plus a single drop of black anilide epoxy dye - stuff is as black as a black hole. The color was pretty close and I couldn't get it any closer to the original. 
3: Used a flat edge to smear on the black epoxy, covering the entire area. 
4: Let the epoxy cure for 2 hrs - just until it gelled -, then carefully pulled off the masking tape. 
5: Let the epoxy fully cure for 24+ hours.
6: Masked the epoxied area. 
7: Using 240 grit sandpaper, sanded the side edge just to remove any epoxy that seeped through onto the sidewall. Just a one or two light passes did the trick. 
8: Used the 240 grit sandpaper to sand the entire epoxied area down to the level of the original top sheet. 
9: Removed mask and made sure it was smooth with the original top sheet then re-masked the area again with masking tape. 
10: Used the 3M Headlight restoration kit:
11: -500 grit pad on the drill attachment and sanded the entire area for a good 15 to 20 seconds.
12: -800 grit pad on the drill attachment - wetted the area and the 800 pad - and sanded/polished for a good 20 - 30 seconds. 
13: -3000 grit pad on the drill attachment - wet the area and the pad - - and sanded/polished for a good 20 - 30 seconds. 
14: -attached the supplied foam polishing pad and a dime-sized amount of supplied polish and buffed the area for a good 30 - 45 secs or until I saw no more polish and the area took on a mirror polish. 

I probably didn't need to keep re-masking off the area, but i wanted to keep checking my work. The resultant layer of epoxy ended up being no more than a mm thick at most which made it a challenge to gauge when sanding - you can even see from the pictures below that I accidentally went too far with the 500 grit on the drill pad - I sanded through a very small bit of epoxy on the edge of the repair. All in all, I think for the first time doing this, the results were exceptional and definitely exceeded my expectations. Below are a bunch of pics of the process. I can't thank everybody enough who chipped in with some awesome advice about how to go about cleaning up this top sheet dmg. 

https://i.imgur.com/x6VSy5X.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/sWpFZG5.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/YokVskh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/DqKJYnj.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/S4DXehp.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/tA02RQ2.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/YEMT4O1.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/K96WmbN.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/mqd6nHr.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/OdlL1Kt.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/laSMZ33.jpg


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## Craig64 (Jul 16, 2015)

Got back from a week at Perisher the other day and some clown on rental skis ran over the back of my Custom in the Leichhardt lift line. As a result a tiny chip occurred in the right side topsheet edge on the tail. So I'll show the how I did this repair with a little improved technique. This repair was pretty quick to do.

So 3 1/2 decades ago I worked in surfboard manufacturing just out of school for a few years. Here I was able to develop some tradie skills in the bank in order to work fairly competently with fibreglass/repairs etc.

Now the Snowboard Industry as a whole are steering towards more "Greener" fabricating processes and moving away from using higher toxic polished topsheets (Which are so much easier to repair and blend in). They now prefer having more environmental friendly satin/matte topsheet finishes on their snowboards. Now the satin/matte finishes are a little harder to blend in with a pad and I find with some boards ie Libtech, the topsheet design is so very close to the surface that the slightest touch with a micro grade sanding pad eats this away.

These photos were taken after I had done the repair to just go through the process with you. The bamboo mixing stick is just used to help my S8 focus in really close.












Delicately clean out the chip with razor. Precisely tape up around the chip topsheet and edge area to be repaired.












In the past I use to just mask over the area to flatten the epoxy down but the adhesive on the tape left a rough texture on the set epoxy that had to be sanded smooth. What I do now is lay a strip of clear tape (adhesive sides together) on the masking tape the exact size of the repair which will give me a preset smooth finish on the fill in.











Tape up over the epoxy and stick down to a flat level. Allow epoxy to set for 24 hours so it is not "gelly" when you remove the tape.










You will just have to slightly sand the edges as the epoxy will squeeze out to the side. Blend in the top sheet edge angle with 240 grit to match in the profile. Don't touch the topsheet with the sandpaper. Smooth out edge with wet 600 grit and polish with wax to finish. 










You will not have to do in top sheet sanding as the epoxy will be finished in a satin look laying directly flat on your board.

You can prior colour match in the top sheet to blend in but as the topsheet design is a thin layer sheet you will have to be precise with the paint as you will see any overflowing down the edges and this will require sanding out with a razor/paper to make it aesthetically look sweet.

At distance of a few feet this repair is hardly noticeable.


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