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This is a DIY but I’ll leave it here where the thread started. Ok, so after a false start I think I got this board repair headed in the right direction. The false start was that I vacuum bagged the first try instead of pressing and applied heat to fast. This caused the PTEX patch to expand and bubble off the boards core in the middle. So I earned some sanding. Steps to fixing a cracked split:
In the photo below I made a template out of a sheet of alu. Tapering ends are important to remove a hinge point for the board to break on again. I clamp that to the base and cut into the ptex around the clamps, then clamp on the other side, move the first clamps and finish the cut. The left over fabric is some woven 5oz. carbon/innegra from the first try, it was really too thick for vacuum molding. Chisel the ptex off while not cutting into the base. Sand a taper into the remaining fabric, carbon in this case as this is an ultracraft.
The patch should fit easily in the board. Remember that the patch will grow about one mm. when it gets heated up to cure the resin. It is best to cut the patch in a room that is 95 degrees or warmer so the sizing is close.
Below are the fabric patches cut to give the board its strength back. I only use one patch with the fiber running across the board. I really like this material, it is a wafer thin 2.5 ounce unidirectional carbon with strands of Innegra to allow the carbon to flex farther before failure. The white part is the Innegra which is there to give the carbon more durability like fiberglass has but without the weight penalty. It is common in canoes, kayaks and surfboards and is beginning in the road bike industry. It will probably be pretty widespread in sports gear in a few years.
Below I have 2 1/2″ pieces of plywood that have the same curve as the boards camber above and one piece of ply below the board. I have a clamp every 1.5 inches, maybe 16 of them turned pretty tight. I have a sheet of baking paper next to the ptex and a sheet of aluminum above that to carry heat to the resin. I heated this board to 105 for about 2 hours so as not to over heat and expand the patch before the resin hardened. Now in this pic I am heating to 130 F to cure the resin which adds toughness to the resin and increases its bond strength.
This is the board base before grinding, It appears low and flat enough that the grind wont go through it this time, YAY! There is a little white line on the left where some of the innegra fibers are stuck in the crack between the old base and the patch, no biggie. It will be interesting to see if it stands the abuse that Zak can give it, he seems to ride a lot.
What I didn’t show is that whatever fabric you use, you need to soak it in resin on a sheet of baking paper for a minute or two, then give it a hard scrape with a squeegee or spreader or plastic drywall knife to remove as much resin as possible. then lay the fabric in where you want it and squeegee as much resin off for each sheet. The warmer and more runny the resin the better. Too much resin will keep the base patch too high and actually weaken the composite. The core and base patch also need a coat of resin brushed on and any excess removed.
Stellar job!
I broke a Rossi XV in a similar way after hitting the pointy tip of a rock buried into the snow at full speed.
The initial impact broke one board half in two and then proceeded to dig a groove all the way through the fiberglass:
It broke the core and then broke the topsheet:
All in all it was a huge impact. I was carrying an ABS backpack full of gear, clothes and stuff for a few days stay – probably around 15kg. It sent me cartwheeling, dislocated my shoulder, it was smelling of burned plastic after landing!
In France everybody I talked to wrote it off and didn’t want to bother. I dried it as good as I could and then sealed it with epoxy. Next year I went back home, where with the help of a guy, who has his roots in building kiteboards fixed it like new. He has tons of experience repairing broken skis, snowboards and splitboards.
I can’t find photos of the process, but here is the end result. I rode it pretty hard for the entire season and it still is in great shape!We approached it from the top. Cut a tapered piece off of the topsheet – taper is important, if it is perpendicular it will snap super easily, as noted by Scooby.
We noticed the wooden core was snapped, so put “ribs” across the crack, then covered with layers of fiberglass and plastic to seal it on top (might have been ABS, but do not take my word on that). You can see the plastic has rubbed of from the Phantoms, after a season of riding, but the fiberglass is holding well:
On the bottom just cut a piece of the base, cut a bit from the teared fiberglass, patched with a thin sheet of fiberglass and then filled with ptex + epoxy:
On one of the photos you can see another decently sized gouge in the base. That one didn’t cut through to the fiberglass, so I have just filled it with regular PTex with a gun, but it’s a tad too big, so the ptex keeps cracking. The ptex+epoxy is essential for larger holes.
P.S. The Rossi has a cheese-like ptex base, that dents just by looking too hard on it, but the wooden core is superb. It had soaked up significant amount of water before drying and sealing it, then spent the summer like that, but there was not a sign of rot.
On the other hand, I broke the tail of a Never Summer Summit after a botched landing a few years ago. It had managed to completely rot a large swath of the core in the affected half in record time.
I had it repaired in a different shop back then and it held well for about a season, before botching another landing and breaking again the same half, this time at the nose, instead of the tail.I also have a friend with a broken G3 Black Sheep and know of another one with a broken G3. All this boards – mine, the G3s have broken at the heelside half. Splitboards are definitely more fragile than solids!
Post grind on base side ultralight composite repair. Pretty smooth, a small bit of innegra showing but minor. Id put the last layer on innegra side down next time. I have a good feeling about this fix, we will see. Grind by 7even skis here in Utah, who I highly recommend.
I just wanted to post in this thread, and thank you all for sharing, as I’ve read it before attempting my first ever a little bit more serious repair.
I have a Jones Flagship that I botched a landing pretty bad with jumping going full speed in a resort (and yes, of course right under the chair lift). Needless to say, I didn’t ride more that day, as my mouth tasted like blood from the hard impact to my chest.
When landing, I had too much weight on my front foot, resulting in the board digging down in the hard piste, sending me forward to the ground full speed.The boards top sheet cracked on the toe-side a little bit in front of the binding, just as tip starts to raise.
On closer inspection then I got home, it seemed like the core was not that badly damaged, so I had good hopes to succeed with a repair.
The flex still felt intact, but I was worried of the status of the core, and that water would get in eventually unless I did a proper fix.
The board itself is have been having quite a lot of use, and I didn’t feel bad for cutting it up (and failing) the repair.
I started by marking andthen removing as much of topsheet as I could with a regular knife.
It still looked as if the core bad made it!
Then I proceeded with removing the rest of it with sharper tools, and also made the edges och the cut a little cleaner. I stopped when I got down to a layer which felt solid (not porous) and didn’t have any damage.
As I had bought some carbon weave intended for another project, I thought I might as well try that instead och buying something else.
I then proceeded to sand down the area a little bit, until it felt even enough. At this point it looks like the core did get some damage as well, but if so very minor.
Might have been too much resin, but it’s my first attempt at something similar.
Removing some of the excess weave and resin at the edges, and sanding down until smooth.
At this point I just had to seal the resin of with something which does not turn yellow in the sun, and that would make it look slick! After which it received multiple round of sanding with increasingly smoother papers.
At this point I WA quite happy with the result!
I quite like the rough look it got with that patch, I’m not the one being shy about abusing my boards 😀Thank you all once more for posting the work you do, it really helps looking at to get started!
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