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I have a carbon F2 Xantos 295 windsurfing board. The outside bottom has come loose from the board for the entire width and about 3 feet of length.
If I put a vacuum cleaner on the air vent, the bubble will go away for a while, but then it comes back. I would like to fix it myself, if possible. Anyone had this happen before or have any suggestions?
The board did have a few cracks in the top deck. I repaired those with fiberglass cloth, epoxy resin and then covered with Marinetek.
I'm not quite sure how that windsurf board is constructed (i'm not a windsurfer), could you post a picture of the damage? Maybe it would be more clear to someone what you could do to fix it.
I thought that a windsurf board would be foam-core with a fiberglass exterior, but I'm not sure what the airvent is for in that case.
Sounds like you have a major delamination going on. The best way to fix it would be to completly remove everthing that has delaminated then make a thick mixture of epoxy and microbaloons (peanut butter consitency) use a plastic spreader and squeege it onto the exposed foam core. After it dries use a orbital sander or a sanding block and sand it down so that you have a nice smooth surface that is resesed slightly from the rest of the bottom of the board, just enough so that a couple of layers of fiberglass cloth brings it up level to the rest of the board. Now cut 2-3 pieces of 4-6 oz. E glass or even better S glass or carbon if you want to spent $50 a yard just bigger than the area your repairing. You can either pre saturate the cloth and lay it on or you can lay it on pour the epoxy in the middle and squeege it out to the sides. Vacuum bagging it would be the way to go now but I'm assuming you don't have one but you can use siran wrap around the board to hold it down tight if the cloth seems to be liftinig. If not you can just leave it. Let it dry at least a couple days than sand it flush to the rest of the bottom. Hopefully this is minimal if your prep work was good. Dry not to sand into the fibers. Depending on how it looks now you might just be able to paint it or it might take a thin coat of epoxy to fill in scrathes and low spots or a thicker fairing compound if its real bad. Then paint dry and ride!
This is as much work as it sounds if you have the right tools the Epoxy/Microballon mixture sands so easy it takes no time at all.
And don't try and use polyester resin it will destroy your board.
Now that was the way it ideally should be done But you might want to try this since you say a vacuum on the board pulls the bubble back up. Drill a bunch of liitle holes in the bubble probably every few inches. The holes need to be just big enough to get the end of a seringe in. Inject epoxy into all the holes till you think theres enough inthere to coat it all. Put tape on all the holes so that the boards air tight again. Pull a vacuum on the board like you were saying so that it pulls the delminated part tight to the core. Your going to have to let it sit over night witch would probably burn out your vacuum cleaner I would try to get your hands on a vacuum pump witch will also pull a stronger vacuum but could also crush your board if your not carefull also laying some sand bags on it to will help or maybe sand bags alone will be enough to hold it down tight. Once its dry seal up all the holes you drilled and sand them flush and hopefully your good to go.
I have a similar problem with my Pacific 270 board but mine is delaminated on the top. It may not be so bad. Now I have a board whose volume I can adjust by letting it 'balloon' out a bit or let the pressure out of the relief valve and make a lower volume board. Perhaps look at your variable volume board as an asset and use it until it is all used up.
