Got hit by a car today. I made it out alright, maybe got a cracked rib and sore elbow but I can’t say the same for my Century.
I can always get a new front truck, but skatan knows these centrury decks don’t grow on trees. At least not any longer lol
Would you guys say this is repairable? If so, how would you go about it?
What I’m thinking is to tape all around the sides of the nose, fill up as much epoxy as possible (I’ve got some thin table epoxy which hopefully can seep through any internal cracks), epoxy some carbon fiber weave layers around the nose (towards where the deck starts to widen) and finally drill out new holes for the baseplate.
I’ve never tried this, but perhaps if you made a vacuum bag around the nose and put in a few ounces of epoxy, you could clamp the layers back together and fill all the voids in one operation?
I also had the idea of using a vacuum bag in combination with clamps to make sure everything is tight and air-free on the inside. I would need to vacuum the whole board though to prevent leakage, no?
I think however the large chip on the right is pretty much the only layer I can glue back to the board. There would still be a significant chunk of wood missing though. Would epoxy in itself be fine to replace the void?
What do you think about cutting up tiny pieces of carbon weave, stuff that in where the chunk is missing, tape and clamp nose, fill with epoxy, and finally wrap the nose with a couple of layers of carbon weave?
His plan sounds pretty solid as it is. The only change I’d make is to possibly use some fiber glass on the main missing areas and also to gently remove any wood pieces that are not firmly attached to the deck. I wouldn’t remove anything that is still solid purely so you’d give the epoxy plenty of surface area to bond to.
I’d use a 30 or 20 minute cure epoxy and heat it up until it is nice and drippy and runny. Pour that into the deck from the top and also hit it with a hair dryer to help encourage it to run down the inside of the break as much as possible to ensure any gaps in the layers are filled. If you can’t clamp the wood down then I’d just leave it be and then sand off the wood that is sticking too far in either direction.
I have no idea if it will eventually cause lamination issues in the future or not though but it is a repair I’d be willing to make on my own board. Plus it looks like the layers are only really split right at the break so I wouldn’t worry too much.
Oh, also, obviously make a form of some sort to catch the extra epoxy and use tape where needed. I’ve done well with taking wooden mixing sticks, wrapping them in two or more layers of painters tape, and then super glueing them onto the TAPED item in place. Then take a hot glue gun to make sure any tiny gaps are filled by the hot glue and not epoxy. skipping the hot glue will lead to a small leak if not a large leak even if you glue everything together perfectly.
Here is how I did that for a deck with a much easier job to epoxy. I also used chunks of cured over flow epoxy to help reduce epoxy waste. You can’t see the fiber glass but there were at least 3-4 layers of it. I added plenty of hot glue so no leaks on this one
Then a better example of a form with the same method, except dumb ass past-me didn’t add hot glue. Thankfully I added tape to cover that center hole so epoxy didn’t pour all over my desk.
If you use butyl tape, you should be able to seal the bag off around the neck. If you put epoxy inside the vac bag it could go everywhere on the deck, so you should try to limit the spread.
No, I’m just talking about repairing the splits so they don’t spread. I would spread some epoxy on the inside of all the splits you can get into with a paintbrush, then do the vacuum bag thing to be double sure that they fill up, and get pressed together.
Luckily you didn’t lose much material inside of the wheelbase, so you can use whatever kind of filler material you want to replace the chunk that got torn off the tip. In terms of the structure, I’m most worried about the delamination going on inside of the wheelbase.
Then once the shape is repaired with the filler material, you could go over the nose again with glass or carbon.
Yes, chopped material is a good idea for filling up large voids. I wouldn’t try to use chop fibers to fill up small voids though, like if there are any spots that are delaminating. Those would need to have epoxy get wicked up into them. Clamps could work if you have a lot of them and you don’t want to use vacuum.
holy shit! Im glad you dont look lke your board! There has been a fair bit of crashing lately,im just able to walk again,HOORAY! As othere have said you can fix the board with the indicated methods,good luck,stay safe. Part of why we love this activity is the danger,bt dont get complacient i just got very lucky with crash results ,relatively it looks like you did too,board aside.
You’re totally right! I was super bummed about the board until this morning when the soreness in my body really kicked in. Could have gotten alot worse. I ride pretty fast but this happened at a pretty low speed. It’s good to have a reality check sometimes to remind yourself of your mortality. I’ll def be riding a lot safer now on. Hope you heal up quick dude!
Before clamping, I poured the epoxy, hoping that would help the epoxy penetrate into the wood as deep as possible as well as stuffing the damaged area with some chopped carbon fibre (that’s why it turned black on one side).
Enough sanding for today. A bit more sanding tomorrow, a bit shaping and then it’s finally time to lay out some carbon weave on the top and bottom.
I’ve gotten the “oh my fuck, what am I doing”-feeling a couple of times once again since building this thing 3 years ago. I love it.
but it is a repair I’d be willing to make on my own board. Plus it looks like the layers are only really split right at the break so I wouldn’t worry too much.
for obvious safety reasons. I’d say that one would only be ridable to “limp” back home after the wreck