Board Repair Tips & Tricks with UV Resin

Board repair tips & tricks with UV resin will allow you to turn your gnarliest repair into a great fix.

Let’s look at why?

Control

This is a complex repair. You need to fill, strengthen and reinforce. Can you imagine trying to complete it in one pass with traditional resin and hardener once you’ve mixed and it’s going off? Solarez allows you to work all the elements, filler, resin, cloth – in the shade. You can get the lay-up perfect. Then a few minutes in the sun and it’s hard. Completely hard in 24 hours. You can trim your repair so it’s super neat. Wipe off marks and residue. Everything you need is in our Solarez Poly Travel Kit or Solarez Epoxy Travel Kit

Solarez UV resin is best for your repairs as it gives you control. Way more control than traditional resin.

This is because with traditional resin you need to mix up the resin with a hardener or catalyst. It has to be in precise proportions. Apply too little hardener and your repair won’t harden. Apply too much and your repair will crack from chemical heat.

Once hardener is applied you have a definite time limit of minutes when everything has to happen. Applying the resin to your repair too soon it’ll be too liquid and run everywhere. Apply too late and it’s too gluggy to get into your repair, or it’s already gone hard. These problems are made worse by things like air temperature. Too hot or humid, the reaction can be, too quick and you run out of time. Too hot and your resin cracks. If the air temp is cold, the resin might not cure at all, staying sticky.

With Solarez UV resin, there’s none of the problems above. There’s no hardener, no other tube or bottle to mix. The resin stays manageable until it’s exposed to direct sunlight or UV light. You can work on your repair, getting everything structurally right and looking good. Apply the UV resin, place your repair in the sun, in 3 minutes you’re done.

So a great tip for your board repair is to use UV resin.

Manageability & Strength

Here’s a closeup of how you apply Solarez Epoxy Resin straight out of the tube. No mixing, no separate containers, no messing around. The resin is super manageable allowing you to apply and place it where you want. It doesn’t run. Note also you can’t even see the micro fibers adding incredible strength and flexibility to your repair. Clean up? Simply screw the lid back on your tube

As mentioned, traditional and other resins are normally runny. Solarez UV resin straight out of the tube isn’t runny. This is because we’ve embedded thousands of micro fiberglass fibers into our resin. The fibers are so fine they’re almost invisible. They’re a cohesive part of the resin. So the resin comes out of the tube in a controlled way, not spurting or runny. This gives you total control over how and where you apply the resin.

Not only that, the incorporated fibreglass fibers give a huge amount of strength over normal resin. Along with strength comes flex. Your board is always flexing under the wave power. A too-stiff chunk of resin will crack, lose adhesion and popout. Solarez embeds into your board and flexes with its structure.

In addition, our Solarez fibres are tiny, micro. They’re not longish threads that end up hanging out of the tube or getting stuck out of place on your repair. Our micro fibers are a coherent part of the resin making it super strong.

So another tip is to make sure the UV resin you use incorporates micro fiberglass fibers, for application control, repair strength, and manageability.

It’s Dry? Board Repair Tips & Tricks with UV Resin

All Solarez resin dries dry. Most others stay sticky so you get dirt, debris and sand stuck to your repair. Solarez dries super crystal clear and stays clear. There’s no yellowing

Another key benefit and a great tip is that Solarez UV resin dries dry. This may sound like an obvious statement yet most other products do not harden and dry completely. They stay sticky. So your sandpaper will get clogged up and your board finish will look dirty, furry, not look so good.

When you take your board for a surf, the tacky resin will attract dirt, marks, and beach grit.

So to get a repair that will dry, use Solarez UV resin.

Larger Areas?

Larger areas can need repair if fibreglass is ripped off. Or, if you’ve left the repair and water has seeped in damaging a larger surrounding area. Once you’ve got the repair area ready Solarez UV filler will cover the large space with ultra-lightweight bubble filled resin. So you’re not carrying any extra weight. Over the filler you can apply Solarez UV resin and fiberglass cloth. The kit shown here is for polyurethane surfboards, poly indicated by the Solarez yellow colour coding

Does your repair cover a large area? Has a section of the exterior fiberglass been ripped off? Has your ding been left for a while and the surrounding fibreglass started to bubble and lift?

If you’ve got this type of wider area repair that needs filling, use ultra-lightweight UV filler. It’s our UV resin with lots of tiny fibreglass balls added to it. The filler is designed to cover large areas without adding weight. You can apply filler in layers and expose to the sun. Building up each layer filling in deeper areas till you’ve got it uniform. Then apply the UV resin as the last layer, the micro fiberglass fibers giving strength.

Board repair tips & tricks with UV resin, if the area where the ding is located looks like it will be under load or flex, apply a piece of fiberglass extending a few centimeters all around the repair. Use the UV resin to bond it on and you will get great strength.

Remember with UV resin you can do this in the shade. Making sure your repair is flat. Getting rid of air bubbles and any other problems. Once everything is good, simply expose your repair to direct sunlight and in 3 minutes its hard. Completely hard within 24 hours.

Board Repair Tips & Tricks with UV Resin – Looking Good

Even our Solarez Weenie Travel Kits include dual sided 60/120 grit sandpaper so your repair can be looking good. The sandpaper is rough on one side for repair preparation and taking down large spots. Smoother on the other for finishing. Note our Solarez Polyester Weenie Travel Kit and Solarez Epoxy Weenie Travel Kit come in handy waterproof containers

As another tip, your repair will look way better if it’s smooth and glossy. You can’t achieve this by hand-sanding. We do include dual 60 / 120 grit sandpaper to take you from a rough to smooth finish.

However a smoother better looking finish is possible.

As Solarez is so manageable, not too runny, not too gluggy, it’s super easy to work with. Here a great tip is demonstrated where a piece of clear plastic is overlayed over the resin so it matches the repair contour. In this example, the rail of the board. You simply expose the repair to direct sunlight with the plastic in place and in minutes your repair hardens, the plastic comes away freely giving you a super smooth professional finish

By applying a piece of plastic or similar clear smooth flexible material on top of the UV resin you can smooth the resin surface. This is especially handy if your repair is on a rail and you need to follow the curve. The same on a bottom concave or contour. This works especially well for a flat smooth finish on your deck.

You prepare in the shade, hold the plastic in place, expose to direct sun, and your repair will complete with a smooth, true-to-shape, and glossy finish.

In terms of a little more preparation, you can apply tape around the edges, and trim away excess fiberglass cloth and resin over the tape, while it’s still manageable in the shade. You can use our included Wipes to remove overspill or dribbles.

When you expose to sunlight, the area will be near-perfect.

Going Deep

From the surface you get a hint this ding goes deep. Once you’ve got the area open and exposed you can lay down layers of filler. Expose, and repeat. As each layer hardens it becomes a foundation for the next. The filler is ultra light so even though the hole is deep your board won’t be weighed down. The filler has flex characteristics. It won’t become brittle and popout. The Solarez Polyester Econo Repair Kit and Solarez Epoxy Econo Repair Kit include both filler and fiber reinforced UV resin. Dual 60/120 sandpaper and cleaning wipes also included so you can give your repair a great finish

A tip on repairing deep holes.

A nose or fin, or a rock or piece of reef, any of these can impact your board creating deep holes.

One thing to remember with the UV resin is that it needs sunlight to reach it to make it harden. So at the bottom of a deep hole there may be not that much light.

A way to overcome this is to use the UV filler or UV resin in rapid layers. This means applying a small amount in the bottom of the hole and place it so it’s in direct sunlight. Use the ultra-lightweight filler as it’s purpose-made for this type of repair. The UV filler will set in minutes, so can rapidly apply another layer, and repeat.

Where The Sun Don’t Shine – Board Repair Tips & Tricks with UV Resin

Board repair tips & tricks with UV resin, there are some repairs that are rare, where the sun don’t shine. For example, beneath a fin box.

The Solarez Polyester Pro Travel Kit and Epoxy Pro Travel Kit give you ultimate repair capability. You get everything in the Solarez Weenie and Econo Repair Kits, and more. You get two-part resin to be able to do repairs at night, or use on a repair that don’t see daylight. For example the underside of a fin box. Scissors and box openers cut away nasty ding areas. They also cut the included fiberglass cloth and rovings to give extra strong structural repair. Tape, wipes, mixing items, Dual grade 60 / 120 grit sandpaper are all there. Keeping your repair and board super clean, delivering a great finish. All coming in a low volume, waterproof, super handy travel containerBoard repair tips & tricks with UV resin will allow you to turn your gnarliest repair into a great fix.

In our Pro kits we include two-part resin. So in the event that you have to remove and reseat your fin box or deck plug, we’ve got you covered.

Apply the resin where the sun doesn’t shine. When it hardens use our UV filler and UV resin in the surrounding areas as required to fill and strengthen. Finish with a piece of fibreglass cloth cut to size, all included in our Solarez Pro Travel Kits.

These are a few tips to give you the easiest, fastest, best repairs!

Solarez Australia