Surfing School - Glassing - Decals/Colors

Decals and airbrushing are placed or painted on a clean blank prior to glassing. If a decal is to be placed on the board, is should be mounted under the cloth just prior to adding resin to the cloth. Squeegee the decal on the blank at the desired position using a small amount of straight non-hardening resin with no catalyst added. The resin must be the same as that used for glassing on the cloth as the blank will stain to the color of the resin applied.

Air brush designs should be placed on a newly shaped blank before glassing, but with enough time for the design to dry. Use a previously tested water based acrylic if possible. Also, make sure the loose foam has been blown from the blank before applying colors.

Early day (until late 1970s) board colors prior to bleached cloth were applied using pigments. Pigment colors were mixed with the resin prior to glassing. For bottom colors, the pigment was mixed in the resin and applied to the cloth. For a top color, the rails were first tapped to allow the excess resin to be worked off while preventing any discoloration of the lower glassed on cloth. This was done by mixing slightly over a pint of non- hardening resin with the pigment, straining, and then squeegeeing on to and across the foam.

To avoid colored lines, the glasser had to make sure no excess resin if left on the blank. When the resin was dry, the top layer of cloth was glassed on. Note that glassing the top and bottom were often reversed with the colors and pinline going on the bottom rather than top first.

New boards are glassed with bleached cloth, so colors are painted directly on the foam prior to glassing and no cloth cutting is necessary. The bottom layer simply ends on the foam and then is overlapped by the top layer of cloth.