Leaking US Fin Box - Help needed
geoffre...@gmail.com
and the board looked unharmed (or so I thought). I swapped fins and
sailed another couple hrs, epic day. When I came home I tilted the
board on it's tail and water has continued to drip from the finbox for
2 days. It's coming from the bottom of the box, along one of the
edges. Possibly when the fin snapped back it pulled up on the finbox
with the still attached rear pin.
I know the first step is to dry the board but I don't have a vacuum
pump. Anything else I can do? Then for the repair, what can be done?
Will the fin box need to be replaced? Could the edge of the finbox be
sealed somehow? I'm trying to get ahold of a local repair guy but no
luck so far.
Any help is most appreciated. Thanks.
Geoff
Jean-Marie
getting as much of the water out. No pump will do, only time, in a dry
space (with the help of gravity) and even then... Once you are
comfortable with the adjusted "weight" of your board, look for the
hairline crack or around your finbox and go at it. Depending on the
size of what you see, you may use some of the very liquid epoxy that
will flow into the crack and fill it (through capillarity) or make the
crack larger and fix it with resin. I suppose another, cheaper
alternative would be to apply some high quality silicone. Good luck!
jm
wtrplnet
"Jean-Marie" <ber...@optonline.net> wrote in message
news:1163545297....@f16g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
The expert
Florian Feuser
I would advise against such repairs. It's better to replace the finbox
entirely, since it is unlikely that the bond provided by the epoxy will
hold up. Even if it is as strong as the base material, there is no
continuity in the material and it will represent a fault line for more
cracks. Get a fiber-reinforced replacement box from
fiberglasssupply.com or a similar reseller.
The most difficult part is to get the old box out - congrats, if you
own a router or have access to one. When putting the new finbox in
place, make sure you use plenty of microballoons mixed into the epoxy.
You want to thinken the stuff until it is very much like toothpaste. It
makes it much easier to sand flush the excess resin after hardening,
provides significant weight savings and delays overheating of the resin
while curing.
Use the longest pointer fin you own to get the box in vertically and
use masking tape from teh edges of the board to the tip of the fin to
make sure it doesnt move while curing. All in all, a piece of cake....
Florian
Florian Feuser
<flo...@SPAMTRAPfunnygarbage.com> said:
> thinken the stuff
^^^^^^^
grmpf!
I hope you know what I mean....
Florian
kurt
Late in here, but Florian is essentially right. There's no halfway
repair for a cracked fin box mount. Whole box has to come out, whole
new shebang & glass has to go back in.
Eva's site has a very good description, but only for Powerbox & Tuttle;
the specifics for the US Box are different, but the basics are the
same. Go to her site, click Repairs-Menu, go over to the right side,
scroll down to Powerbox Replacement, & you'll see what you're into.
Not something a first timer is going to go for unless you're pretty
handy w/the plunge router & glassing techniques.
Craig Goudie
additional time from patching, but
it will need replacement, and sooner is better than later. A box
replacement would be about $150 (in the Gorge).
-Craig
"Florian Feuser" <flo...@SPAMTRAPfunnygarbage.com> wrote in message
news:4rvpepF...@mid.individual.net...
geoffre...@gmail.com
was my last day of the season. I'll wait a couple months before the
repair, it should be dry.
I went to Eva's site, too bad she doesn't live in Toronto. US box
removal may be a little more challenging than Powerbox. If this was an
older board I would try it myself but it's a 2006 so I'll look for a
professional.
If I need to order the finbox. A US box is just the standard Chinook
finbox found on http://www.fiberglasssupply.com? Thanks for the link,
that's a great site.
sm...@fit.edu
the dealer and either get them to fix or replace/pro-rate it. The
thing should still be under warranty.
sm
Dan Weiss
right on about this repair, it requires removal of the box. Depending
on how the box was supported within the board (laminated sheet foam, a
milled foam block wrapped in cloth, glued between two wooden stringers,
etc) what you have to remove and replace can vary. What you never want
to do is simply remove the plastic box and merely drop another one in
with only the bottom sheet holding it in the board. The box itself
must become part of the structure of the board or else it will blow out
very easily.
The repair is not difficult, and doesn't require a router per se. A
rotary tool (like Dremil) works almost as well. The key is to line up
the center line of the box with the centerline of the board when you do
the instal. I suggest snapping a chalk line to mark the centerline of
the board and then matching centered marks on the bottom of the box to
that chalk line. This is far more important than worrying about slight
canting of the fin to one side. If the angle of attack of the fin is
assymetrical, your entire ride will feel it and the board will never be
the same. One can mistakenly blame the sails for the assymetrical
feel, so take plenty of time aligning the box.
-Dan
Roy Tansill
<geoffre...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1163604181....@h48g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Thanks everyone for the input. Drying time will be no problem, that
> was my last day of the season. I'll wait a couple months before the
> repair, it should be dry.
>
the board. A local glass man used a large dehummer (salvaged off a naval
ship) for his drying room and it even got salt water out of foam. A board
I had "dried" for two months got noticeably lighter after a few days in his
near zero humidity room.
looseClu