fin damage?

[iamvwman]

Just picked up a new fin online. It came with a chip in the head. Should I be concerned or should it have no effect? See pics.

BTW: The green G10 material was visible but I put a little black marker on it.

Thanks for any imput...............

Cheers, Rob.

[downwind dave]

kind of a bummer if you paid top dollar - but that chip will buff right out, the important part is the foil which looks fine. sail it like ya stole it!

[iamvwman]

It's new but I got a great deal on it..........I put it on the board and to sit flush, I would need to sand the edge down a bit. Looks like it will be good.

Waiting for a reply from the shop...............

[skinny]

Hey Rob

The chip you see is most likely not a structural issue. the black material is poured into a fin box mold and then the fin body is placed into that mixture. The fin builders do that so they can place different size fin bodies into the same type of fin box. I would think that the sizing on the top of the fin wasn't a 100% fit and when you pushed the fin into the box it had a weak spot and cracked.
Some bondo style of material should fix the problem.

Steve

[iamvwman]

It came out of the delivery box damaged. I didn't put it in the board's finbox at all. Still waiting to hear from Benoit at Wind-spirit..........

[KUS]

It came out of the delivery box damaged. I didn't put it in the board's finbox at all. Still waiting to hear from Benoit at Wind-spirit..........

Rob, it won't make a diff at all and consider all those Abox crewheads that stick up above the planing surface on boards. As pointed out, if you felt you wanted to fix it, insert the fin tightened, tape off the box area on the bottom of the board with shipping tape, fill up the fin void (after roughing things up a bit with sandpaper or a nail scratching it) with epoxy adding a few microballons so it is easier to sand later if you had to (doubt it), put shipping tape on the filler even with the board surface. Take the fin out later and sand the edge of the repair a bit. Done deal. Good luck

[iamvwman]

Thanks Kus and all.

After checking things out I will just sand off the rough edge and it should be fine. Like Kus said, with screw heads and whatnot poking through on most boards this chip will hardly make any difference. Especially with my hacker sailing style.

I suppose the fact that it was a NEW fin made me pose the question.

Cheers, Rob.