If i were able to email you a few photos of the damage i have could you help me with a few suggestions to fix the damage? It's not on a boat but it's similar damage to the rounded keel shape and on a dune buggy. Can you help?
Worldcat boats are notoriously famous for poor sponson glass. My old boat would Crack and chip down that line even hitting small sticks at idle. Nice repair though
We like to use Dura Block sanding blocks. They sell them in a kit with different sizes which makes it nice for different angles/areas of the boat. You can buy them on Amazon or auto body stores.
Just found your channel and love the Gelcoat repairs. Curious if you could use thickened gel coat instead of the body filler to avoid sanding through finish gel coat ?
Thank you! Yes, you can. It seems not as efficient because it takes longer to dry than body filler but will work for what you are looking for it to do.
After DECADES of doing body work I can say this: THANK god I don’t do it anymore and the keyboard pros in the comment section are helarious… Having a handle we can’t look up and talking smack without allowing folks to see your great work is SO empty… 😂 Thanks for showing this, and glad it’s not me. 🤙🏻👍🏻✊🏻
Haha, thank you. There are many ways to doing these repairs and what works for one may not work well for another but the comments crack me up sometimes.
The confidence you have is awesome. I have some stress cracks and spider cracks I'm going to take on. I'm watching every video on boat gel coat repair on the internet I swear😂. I have already learned what not to do by watching video and reading comments. I have a real good idea of how I'm going to repair what I want to. It's just nerve racking to actually get out there and start grinding. I'm afraid I don't have the talent to make the repair job look as nice as some of the jobs I see in the video. I know most of the materials I need and that I don't have a lot of time to work with resins and expoxy so I have to get it right and I have to be quick. Especially because I live in Florida. I will be trying to do this in my driveway in the summer heat and humidity. Trying to find weather windows with no rain. In Florida thats like trying to split an atom with a pudy knife in your garage😂 . Most of my repairs are on the side of the boat above the rub rail. I have two definite impact circular cracked areas that to do right I will have to grind out down to the glass. I will have to put a couple layers of glass in then I plan on using polyester filler to fill and smooth and shape the area for sanding. It's that part that worries me I suck at sanding things back to original shape to get a nice hidden repair. It's prep thats everything and I know it.
This kid is officially a warrior because she took the tarpon bite like it was nothing so God bless this kid for coming face to face with an undersea warrior that has been living under water since the beginning of time as well:).
Man, mask up the inside of the boat next time... You're honestly doing way more steps than u shpuld. After sanding down the fiberglass just use polyester glass for lows and then fillers for pinholes. Spray the gelcoat, sand and buff..
Good job, not knocking anyone, but why not spend a little more time on your filler so you dont need as much glaze.... just end up packing if not anyway...
I have a hard time understanding filling and glazing to the finished level of the surrounding gelcoat. The new gelcoat has to be very thin. It seems if you ever had to compound this are in the future you could easily burn through.
Should be plenty thick with the proper amount of coats, you could use a mil gauge if you were worried about it. Also once shiny all one has to do is keep up with polish and wax.
Arthur the icing glaze I’m using is a polyester two part self leveling filler. Not sure if you were thinking it was similar to the single part paint glaze? But big difference. It’s amazing stuff, I recommend trying it in addition to your regular filler as your last pass with filler
if the boat it old u need to cut out 1x1 pop the gel out send it to fiberglass florida they will color match it for u or go spectrum gelcoat for new boat with hull ID
@junkintreasures We use many different sources of Gelcoat. Sometimes we color match it by eye. If it’s a newer boat, then we typically purchase factory Gelcoat with the hull ID. Spectrum Gelcoat and Mini craft are a couple companies that manufactures have outsourced older models of their factory Gelcoat. We also have used Merritt supply and Fiberlay to have them color match the Gelcoat with a small quarter size sample. Good luck!
Just my two cents as a retired fiberglass guy. I would remove the gas fill and canvas clips first. It's tough to sand with a block when they're in the way. Just use one layer of 1-1/2 ounce mat. The second layer was probably all ground off to keep the patch within profile anyway. Should have just kept grinding where the other cracks are instead of trying to minimize the work and filling them with putty. Gelcoating on top of the new wet mat helps fill in the voids. From there, I would block sand the whole thing to get it level. Brush on gelcoat to fill small voids and resand. When it's fair, spray gelcoat, thinning with styrene (not acetone). No need for vinylester resins and putties in my opinion.
Really good video. I'm looking at a 28 year old boat. Should I try a heavy cut in and buff to see if it can be revived? how can I tell if its too far gone? and is the only option paint it, or is it ever practical to sand and re-apply gelcoat?
Find an inconspicuous small area on the hull. Get 1000, 800, 600 and 400 grit sandpaper along with a spray bottle. Start at 1000 wet and sand til you see milky residue. Rinse and work down to rougher grit as needed until you start to see a smooth, mirror like finish. You should be able to work thru the oxidation to clean gelcoat before you burn thru it... unless someone already worked it a long time ago- some manufacturers are better than others with gelcoat application, so you might get lucky and be able to sand/cut/polish what you've got.
Your using incompatible chemicals. Polyester won’t bond to vinylester. You should be using a mekp polyester filler with gel coat. Will most certainly have issues down the road doing this. Cream fillers are brittle and used for pin holes only.
There is no one way to do repairs. Vinylester is a tie coat that bonds to epoxy and poly. So you’re telling me boat manufacturers that spray polyester Gelcoat into there molds and then do a vinylester lay up are using incompatible materials?
your chemicals will separate year or so down the road if your not careful do some research if you don’t take my word for it. I see this mistake all the time even at big marinas with million dollar boats smh
I use your recipe for spraying gel coat with a preval sprayer and small cup, eg. 2oz gel coat (no wax); 1oz patch booster; 2% MEKP. Im getting a lot of orange peel? Any suggestions?
@bubbabigbucks1 You will always have orange peel after spraying Gelcoat, you should apply guide coat and sand them out with 400 then 800 then 1200 and after that process you can compound and polish. Even when spraying with a gun you will still need to sand out, unlike paint unfortunately. The guide coat will really help to see the orange peel and stay within your repair area.
@@ChettyH2O thanks for your reply. You make this process look too easy. I think I need to load the gel coat on more than I have. I’m burning through the repair more often than not.
Seriously beautiful repair. I need to do similar repair on my boat where keel hit when being placed on dry rack. Previous repairs have fallen off down to the fiberglass.
