Gelcoat repair

Liberty44140

This is my jet boat. Foolishly tied it up along a channel not realizing it was banging against a shore power pedestal. Three hours of boat traffic and dozens of little nicks and punctures. 

Question is on the small nicks, do I need to dremmel them deeper to do the repair? There is a spectrum repair kit for this which is great, but I’m hoping to not have to dremmel too many of them out first. The lines you see will sand out, they don’t need filled. 

Appreciate any thoughts 

MarkB

It's hard to get perspective, how wide, long and deep would you say they are? What you don't want is like a small spider vein sized cut ... the gel won't stick well to that. But for sure if you're talking about something that is 1/4" wide, it should stick properly. You have a variety of sizes there, so you might have to carve out some of the thinner nicks. 

As bad as that looks, if you can get a color match, it isn't that difficult to fix that, just takes time ... let the gel set properly before you go sanding it. 

Also, it looks like some of those nicks went deep and into the fiberglass. Is there any fiberglass damage? You might want to take out any lose pieces of fiberglass, and fill with a bit of epoxy, then apply the gelcoat. This is for two reasons ... you want a fairly sturdy backing under the gel, so it doesn't flex and cause cracks in the future. Also, if you apply too thick of a gelcoat, it will crack. There's an optimal thickness for gelcoat.

Liberty44140

Thanks Mark. Luckely none of them are more than 1/4", most of them are maybe 1/8". I'll probably carve out some of the smaller ones. No glass damage, it is all gelcoat. I'll post back as the repair happens, iBoats is two weeks out on shipping the color match kit. 

Liberty44140

So this went ok. I could not easily backtrack the exact same gelcoat color like Rinker does so being a 1996 sea doo I bought 1995-2005 sea doo super white. Unfortunately this has a hint of purple in it so my repair isn’t perfect but we are fine with it as it’s waaaaay better than before for only $55 and hey it’s $3k, 1996 boat so life will go on. Our trim is purple anyway, you can’t tell from a few feet away. I did dremmel out most of the nicks:

aero3113

Looks great @Liberty44140 , it’s possible that the purple tint may fade in the sun.

Pat310

Very nice!

Spyderweb

Good job.  

Cableguy Greg

Great job!! 

Liberty44140

Thanks. Yea aero I hope so! 

davidbrooks

@Liberty44140 how much gelcoat did you end up using for this repair?  I am going to work on my radar arch where it is all cracked this winter and not sure how much i will need.  I know i have to thin it and then put in some other additives.  Just not sure how much actual gelcoat i am going to need.

Liberty44140

Hi David, I bought the spectrum kit that is a 2 oz jar and unused 75% of it. Took two coats. First coat was every bit of 50% of the jar/one oz but after sanding with 220 I had some low spots where it settled in to the deeper holes, then mixed up another half ounce and that did it. Just threw away the 1/2 oz left.

davidbrooks

That is what i was hoping.  I have two of those already and i was thinking that after i thinned it for spraying it might be enough.  I didn't want to order a qt just to use a tiny bit.  What did you use to spray it?  I was thinking about trying out one of the disposable paint sprayers from WM.  I have an old spray gun i inherited from my dad but have never used it. 

Liberty44140

I just wiped it on with a plastic scraper, did not spray, that area in total was 3 ft long by 4 inches. Initial 220 sand was not glorious but only took 40 min or so to get it back to level. Many, many years ago I used those disposable sprayers for gelcoat repair and it worked well but I can’t remember what gelcoat I used or how I thinned it. Definitely was not a spectrum 2oz repair kit. 

MarkB

Good job! Now it's time to get a nice vinyl graphic designed and put on over that repair. It'll look cool, and cover up any purple that may be worrying you.

YYZRC

I have the perfect one!

mattie

Calvin hates pianos….

Liberty44140

Mark you are right! Etsy has some decent sea doo and BRP logos for like $30 a pair so indeed if we find it bothers us in the spring someone will be getting an order 

lol the admiral doesn’t even like when I pee off the dock!