I recently performed a wedding for my good friend Jon Montague. There were quite a few surfers in the crowd, so I decided to offer a surf analogy.
Here it is: “Two liquids, resin and catalyst, are basically useless on their own. Resin is cool. Catalyst is hot. Too much catalyst and the entire thing bursts into flame. Too little catalyst and the compound never becomes firm. Yet, when both of these substances are combined in just the right proportions, they form a bond capable of enduring even the strongest ocean storms.”
There were some older surfers in the crowd, so I figured that anyone who ever made or repaired a surfboard before the turn of the last century would get the metaphor. Yet, after I spoke and looked out at the little congregation, I was met with blank stares. Resin and catalyst? What’s he talking about?
It quickly occurred to me that most of those in attendance used U.V. resin, which comes in a convenient tube and requires no catalyst to patch a ding. Now, I doubt that most of the surfers there had ever repaired a board at all. Instead, they took their damaged prize to one of the many fine surfboard repair shops on the coast. While I don’t blame them, it was not always that way.
Blame it on garages being converted into granny flats. Blame it on the computer revolution, or hand crafts like wood shop and metal shop being removed from school. Blame it on whatever you like, but few surfers I know patch their own dings anymore.
In my day everybody patched their own dings, although not all of us were good it. The basics remain the same: Cut out the dead foam, replace it with a fresh piece of foam, or fill in the blanks with resin and foam dust, apply fiberglass, cut the lap, gloss, fine sand, and, for the perfectionist, polish the repair.
Some ding repairs are even more involved than that, requiring you match the original colors or, worse case scenario, replacing a fin.
In the past, few places we traveled to for surfing had ding repair shops, so, we either fixed our boards ourselves or didn’t surf.
I can do adequate ding repair making a board watertight. Patching a ding so a board looks like new, however, is an art and beyond my ability.
Since I prefer surfing without a leash, I pick up dings nearly every time I lose my board, which is an increasingly common occurrence.
Recently I cracked my fin on a reef. The result was a shattered fin and a small ding in the bottom of my beautiful new board. I immediately returned to the beach, got in my car and went in search of an old-fashioned ding repair kit containing fiberglass, resin, catalyst and sandpaper. It took several stops before I found what I was looking for.
Once at home, I took my time sanding, mixing, glassing and glossing. The result was a repair good enough to be undetectable at a distance. The repair left me with a sense of accomplishment, and the idea of making a surfboard from scratch, something I haven’t done for 30 years.
If you have never made your own board, give it a shot. It’s even more fun than repairing an old one.
