Minor Gelcoat Repairs- cracks

Danishgod

does anyone have a suggestion based on past experience on what is the best product for fixing minor gel coat repairs?

Robs_232

Best bet is iboats.com as they carry Spectrum Colors gel coat. Spectrum Colors has repair kits for the different colors of a lot of manufacturers, including Rinker. I had to fix a minor repair on my boat, which was caused by a close friend in another boat, and I had to buy a quart of gel coat for my color. I fixed the repair, so about anyone can, and no one can even see what I repaired. I am OCD and I can't see the repair. Yes the quart of gel coat cost me $100, compared to their smaller patch, but much cheaper than having a marine gel coat repair fix it. I recommend searching on this site for gel coat repair. That is what I did. Preparing area, sanding, and then buffing was key.

MarkB

The trickiest part is getting the color to match. Everything else is super easy, if it's only minor spider web cracks.  Basically you need to groove out the cracks about 1mm or more wide to give the gelcoat enough volume to actually stick to.  Clean area with acetone. Then you apply the new gelcoat paste, and try and get it as flat, smooth as possible.  Before it cures, try and get rid of any air bubbles or grooves in the wet paste to make your life easier when it comes to sanding. 

Once it's cured, you wet sand with a fine grain paper - I start at 800, then 1000 and then 2000 before I polish and way the area with an orbital polisher.  Some will start with 600, but the gelcoat sands off easy (it's like sanding plastic), so I'd be careful, even with 800 do not sand too much, or you will just sand it all off.

Do one small area as a test, once you go through it once, you'll know exactly what to do on the next area.

Danishgod

thanks guys