Spackling a Surfboard? Yep!

If you would have asked me even a couple weeks ago: "Think you'll ever spackle a surfboard?". The answer would have been a definite "No". But as of last night that has changed. With #1-#2 pound EPS it's a good idea to seal the foam before fiberglassing.

A lot of people recommend using some of the fiberglass beads mixed in with a resin mixture of about equal parts resin to beads. There's also a lot of people who recommend doing a very thin coat of Spackle. What this does is just fills in the small holes and small gauges that are in the foam from shaping. Both methods makes the foam soak up less resin during the glassing step and keeps the board a little bit lighter in the end and lets you use up less resin.

So I decided to go the Spackling route. I mixed in a little bit of distilled water into the spackle, mixed it up and poured it on the board:



The spackle was thinned down to about a mayonnaise consistency, so was pretty easy to spread all over the board. The only tricky part was the rails. Trying to make sure I put a smooth consistent layer on their was a little tricky, but it was really good practice for when I start glassing. It was more or less the same type of motion.

Once both sides were completely dry it was time to sand. You only really want to have the spackle in the holes and voids. It's not really meant to be a cover layer over the board, so I had to sand it down nice and smooth.



As you can see, I finally got around to sweeping up the floor a little bit too. That's about it for now. I'll get around to glassing it either today or tomorrow. I can't wait to see just how it comes out.