tbkite said...

Hey all

I have an old windsurfer of plastic construction. I was wondering how to go about doing a repair? I have a split in the bottom and another puncture.

cheers

Doubtful that it is worth fixing. People will pay you to take away old plastic beginner boards.

If you must do it, it is not easy. Nothing will glue it, you can do a normal fibreglass repair but it won't last as it won't really stick no matter what surface prep you give the plastic.
Fill any holes in the foam with epoxy and q-cell, then plastic weld it.
A soldering iron and some scrap polytheylene to melt into the crack where the sides won't meet.
At best it will be ugly and watertight, at worst it will be ugly and sink

generally cracks and punctures happen when your sailing and unfortunately the board takes in water, maybe you should weigh the board and if it's hot to heavy get a hacksaw blade and rough up the area and fill with araldite , it mite not work but it's worth a shot, i did a nonslip on a plastic tiga with epoxy & divinicell dust , it was the best nonslip i have had

keef said...

generally cracks and punctures happen when your sailing and unfortunately the board takes in water, maybe you should weigh the board and if it's hot to heavy get a hacksaw blade and rough up the area and fill with araldite , it mite not work but it's worth a shot, i did a nonslip on a plastic tiga with epoxy & divinicell dust , it was the best nonslip i have had

Yeha but that Tiga was probably an ABS shell, not 1970's polyethylene

Tiga mainly used "Microlite" and could be heat welded with a Leister heat gun with a special attachment. It was a type of polyethylene. Some types of polyethylene were "cross-linked" and when heat is applied, the material shrinks and the therefore the hole gets bigger!

Learned that real quick!

I think the early Windsurfers were just basic polyethylene, but when a professional board repairer was asked how to fix a Windsurfer, he said to clean the damaged area and silicone it up to keep the water out!

Good luck!