Hey guys! I bought a Boosted V1 deck that comes in the mail in a few days. It’s in pretty good condition, but I still plan to sand it down and add some varnish. I’m not super familiar with best practices for this sort of thing.
What do you guys recommend I use? I’m not really sure what’s most common/effective for our uses… looking at you, deck gurus…
Currently planning to give it a light sand and apply this stuff https://a.co/d/6K9xlez
Thought? Tips? Any advice is appreciated
Deck I purchased:
Are you set on refinishing? You could always lay up some carbon fibre and then frit it. Would take you about the same time and effort and would be rad.
CF kits can be had on ebay easily and :
Yeah, I think refinishing is gonna be the plan… I don’t want the cable routes to be visible on top so I’ll have to cover em with grip tape.
Edit: wait now I think I understand what you meant about laying the CF first… would that affect the flex?
It would make the deck stiffer bc of the resin/epoxy. If you wanna keep the flex the same, you could always paint it instead… if you find a good primer you could likely just rough up the clear coat (instead of stripping) and paint right over top.
Do you have any experience finishing wood?
I highly suggest glass fiber and not carbon fiber. On top of having better properties for a longboard deck, it also isn’t opaque to radio like carbon is.
No experience finishing beyond DIY home projects. I’m not sure about a frit though, I want to maintain as much flex as I can. Also seems like a lot of work and I’m pretty lazy. Do you think the stuff I listed above would be okay or should I find a primer?
Brian is correct. Carbon Fibre does interfere w your remote’s signal but a single layer on top of your board will likely have an almost negligible effect.
But CF is def not the only route. Fibre glass as @b264 points out, and @Nacho linked a cool tutorial on how to skin a deck. Again, this will change the flex. Lots of options
Hahaha welp, in that case rough up the coat w some 220 grit, prime and paint it w some rattle cans. Then clear coat it w 2k poly. Prob your best bet. Poly is super toxic tho so wear a ventilator
That’s more like it. Thanks so much for the tips my guy. Have a great evening!
Thinking I’ll take some time and do a frit on my new @tomiboi build once it arrives. Can’t wait.
The loaded deck is probably laminated which will make sanding and staining difficult. Paint and fiberglass or CF would probably be the way to go.
Glass is going to keep more of the flex than CF.
I do think some sort of reinforcement is a good idea, but I’m not a fan of the frit.
Polyurethane finish works well over epoxy, is robust and easy to apply.
Think I should just throw some primer and then poly varnish on it? Skip the sanding?
You can still sand, but you’ll just want to be neatening up the surface.
If you’re going to paint over you don’t have to worry about the blotchiness that different layers of finish could leave.
Do varnish first, then your decorative paint or whatever, then varnish again over that.
You want varnish on the wood first to protect the wood, get it all sealed up.
Because its an old deck, it probably could use being re-sealed.
After doing that, it may end up not being very blotchy, and you might be happy without paint.
But if you do want to paint it that’s still an option.
Then you’d have a final layer of varnish, just to protect the paint.
I would sand to prep for the paint. For some reason, I thought that your intention was to sand down to the wood to refinish it. On most of the Loaded decks that I have seen they have a laminate on the outside, if yours has that, then you would probably peal it as opposed to sanding if you were trying to get down to the wood.
Sanding and varnishing with a boat varnish would probably be great. Personally, I’d use a two-part epoxy, but either would work.
If you want to stiffen it up put a layer of fiberglass on the bottom.
Man, this deck is in such surprisingly good condition… makes me question if sanding is even needed.
This specific deck has glass on top and a sexy bamboo veneer below with glass as the next layer.
Caution is needed sanding the bottom because you can sand through to the glass pretty easily around the edge, I’ve done it.
Thinking I’ll just do a gentle hand sand and then a few layers of some varnish. Help seal it up.
Softest sandpaper you’ve got. Light little circles.
Don’t sand loaded decks unless you’re gonna add new fiber. Just scuff em up as light and even as you can. Start from the center and work outwards.
