How Long Does It Take To Repair A Ding?

I did mine in 3 hours the other night, and most of thats curing time. Looks bloody terrible, but its water tight! :)

I have a great guy in Half Moon Bay that only works on PU boards and usually turns them around much faster. Drop me a line if you want his phone number. He has repaired at least 1 ding on all my boards and did an awesome job on a board that went through the rocks at indicators.

do it yourself, a day or two
and then the world is a better place.

Depends on the ding. If you do it yourself:

1. Small ding (1" or less and no need for fiberglass) - Use sun cured resin. Shouldn't take more than 1 minute to apply, 20 minutes to cure, 20 minutes to sand. Total time: 20 minutes to an hour.
2. Medium ding (requires fiberglass) - Use glass and some epoxy resin (less smelly, longer work time than standard stuff, and available at Resin Research). 5-10 minutes to apply each coat of resin. 1-5 hours to cure depending upon temperature. 20 minutes to 1 hour of sanding with various grits. Total time: 1-3 days depending upon size.
3. Big ding (think delam or rail crunch) - User glass and some epoxy resin. 10-15 minutes or more to coat each layer. 1-5 hours to cure per layer (e.g. repair, hot coat, gloss coat). 30 minutes to 3 hours of sanding with various grits. Total time: 2-4 days.

Guys who do this for a living can reduce the times, but if they have lots of work, they can extend them quite a bit too.

Hope this helps.

If the board has sucked any water you also really want to let it dry out, could take along time especially for eps. Crushed glass and foam should really be dremmeled out. I use qcell or some other filler instead of just pouring in resin to fill holes its much lighter and way easier to sand. Always fill then glass over anything that really damaged the glass. They're alot of good howto's online, but if it seems like a shortcut it is and you'll be unhappy with your repair unless you just toss your boards after a year or so. I used to really like the tradional resin but styrene is really not good for you or anyone else at all so I want to start using the epoxy resin.

You know...I'm getting better and better, but currently my own repairs look like shite.
However, I'm getting an orbital sander today heh :)
So it should be getting even better.
And with that, I'll probably take more time, so it's a trade off. :)
And as for your guy taking 3 weeks...yeah he probably has quite a few boards to do.

I would do my own repairs if I had the room, living in an RV doesn't give me the space for drying and properly fixing.

I have worked with a buddy of mine to repair/refurbish my Epoxy Wood Surftech longboard before. To re-glass the nose, fix about 7 cracks, and 3 major cracks that were running vertical almost the length of the board took the 2 of us about 14 hours of work over 4 days. It was a damn big project. As you can see in the pic below it came out pretty well. The quote I got from a ding guy that does EPS was about $350-400 which considering how much work we did, was a fair price.

We used an orbital sander, a few grits on sanding blocks, fiberglass and Epoxy Resin. The biggest help to making the job work out was he had a set of surfboard shaping stands - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tylerkaraszewski/4921115810/in/set-72157624... I highly recommend building or getting a set if your going to do your own repairs, maybe get a few buddies and go in on a set to share around.