Bossnass

I'm fixing up a pair of seadoos before I sell them and I have a boat that needs some work. I think I know the basics of preping, as far as filling and sanding. I have all the grades of sandpaper and a buffer with polishing compound and wax ready to go. It's the middle step, the actual application of the gel coat that I'm not sure about. The gel coat I have is too thin to fill an upside down gouge (as you would find on the underside of a boat) and it is too thick to spray easily.

As I understand it, I can go in two directions with the gel coat compound:

1- With a deep scratch or gouge, fill the area mostly flush with a repair fill, then thin the gel coat compound and spray it on. I'm not sure if I can get my hands on an appropriate sprayer, but I think it would leave the best results.

or

2- Add some sort of hardener to the gel coat compoud to make a paste, and use the paste to fill the gouges and chips.


Any suggestions or recommendations? I'm going to get a better step-by-step from some experienced guys who I 'kinda' know before I start, and I'll continue websearching for more resources. Of course, someone with hands-on experience would be more helpful then anything google can provide.

MSD

You'll want to use the air compressor/sprayer method

Check this page for the full process.
http://www.concentric.net/~westsys/gel-rep.shtml
They really covered everything I would have said.

the420star

I race sailboats and when we have surface scratches we fixxed them with something called marine tex, or mara tex... i cant remeber right now the exact name, but they sell it at west marine... if you arnt worried about he look of the hull, b/c its a light grey when it drys. It is very hard, and sands really smooth... on another note, by all means dont use gelcoat in a tube, that stufff just falls off...

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da kine

I've mixed the gel coat with silica, which is used specifically for the purpose of thickening the gel coat so that it can fill vertical spaces. The silica particles are extremely small and looks like powder. Depending on the size of the particles, they go by names like thicksil, aerosil, and q-sil from Fiberglass Hawaii.

gboz

The best one of those silicone filler materials (microspheres) that I've found is called cab-o-sil. The only problem is that it's sometimes harder than the gelcoat so you have to be careful when you sand it not to sand into the surrounding gelcoat. There are some pre-mixed repair putties out there that may be called mold repair putty. One company is Hawkeye Ind. Here's a link: http://www.duratec1.com/ag07.html

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Bossnass

Nod nod.

I used cabosil flakes to thicken the gelcoat where I had deeper gouges. Worked pretty well.

I would, however, like to go on the record to say that it is damn near impossible for an exact color match. The cabosil which claims to cause no color change makes a cream white mix slightly greyer then it was.

I didn't notice that the repaired area was any harder then the surrounding original gel coat. But I tried to make it as flush as possible while applying it and stuck with the high grits anyway. (after sanding through the gel coat in another area while thinking that certain scratches weren't deep enough to add matierial).