Holes in my Waterlog Surfboard, Part 6 of the Grain Build

The hot coat cured overnight and looks... ok... although it will clearly need a pretty good sanding. Hopefully the gloss coat I'll add next week will go on better.

This morning I took a bowl of hot water and a clean rag and wiped down the epoxy to help get rid of any amine blush that might have risen. It looked like there was a little and I'll probably do it again later before sanding.

I intend to only sand the rail edges for now to prepare to glass the bottom and will let the deck cure fully for the next few days. Then I'll sand the entire board, top and bottom, later this week. Fully cured epoxy sands SO much easier than 'mostly' cured.

Today though, I drilled holes in the board! One for the vent and one for the leash cup thing.

This picture below is cockeyed and makes the holes look off-center to each other but they're actually pretty well aligned.

I had already drilled a vent hole before even gluing down the deck and then have kept the hole open whenever possible. So today it was an easy job finding exactly where to drill. The leash cup was exactly opposite of the center line, so that was easy too.

I masked the area and then used a 1 1/16" forstner bit in my hand-held electric drill and carefully drilled out the holes. I went a bit too deep in both holes but that we easy to remedy. The top rims of each are now floating barely above the deck level and should be pretty easy to sand flush once cured.

I wetted out the holes with unthickened epoxy to ensure that the bare wood would get coverage, and then thickened the remaining epoxy with wood flour. I poured some thickened epoxy in the hole and set the piece in making sure that the epoxy squished up the sides completely.

I might have some air bubbles that I might later have to fill but otherwise I think they're in there well enough.

Below you can see that they are weighted down a bit.

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