Gelcoat Repair

[Tom Stewart]

Hi All!

Long story short I made contact with the dock the other day and put a nice scratch/gouge in the side of my hull. Question is: I want to repair the scratch and wondered what the best way to accomplish that is? The hull is painted with Awlgrip Jade Mist Green and I'm wondering if it would be easier to just paint the gelcoat repair or ad the Awlgrip to the gelcoat paste or try and match the color using tint to the gelcoat paste? Any ideas would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Tom

[dennisjay]

Awlgrip sells small bottles of some of its paints. But I think it depends on how deep the gouge is. I've experienced the same issue, and just painted it. Looks fine from 15 ft. away.

[minaret]

If the hull is painted this isn't really a gelcoat repair, it's a paint repair. As long as the scratch/gouge doesn't go into the glass and is therefore just cosmetic, it's a fairly easy fix if you have the equipment. Just tape the area off close to the scratch to prevent coarser grit scratches farther out and fill and fair the scratch with the fairing compound of choice, WEST/407 if it's big, Evercoat or Rage followed by Evercoat if it's small. Once it's fair prep sand a couple of feet out around the repair with 1000 grit wet. If it's a really long scratch and thus a big area you can get 1000 grit DA film discs but you better know what your doing or you'll blow through like this. Better to wet sand by hand 1000 grit and prep thorough. Then mask off and spray 3-4 coats of the right color Awlgrip, each one going further than the last out onto the area of prep. Let it cure and then blend in the whole repair with 2000 grit wet by hand. Polish it out with 3M Imperial on a foam polishing pad followed by 3M Finesse-It II on a fresh clean foam pad. If you do it right it will look brand new, but if you blow through when blending then you have to re-shoot the whole thing even bigger. Be careful, there's a learning curve. If it's a big scratch, it can help to shoot a few coats of 545 tinted with the topcoat color onto the fairing compound first and sand it out nicely to make sure any coarser grit scratches or pinholes are filled before topcoating. If it's really small you can get an almost perfect first pass with filler by slicking it with a razor blade and then going straight to wet sanding. Can save a lot of work if you keep it small and skip primer by doing this.

[dennisjay]

If you do spray Awlgrip (or Awlcraft), just be very careful. It's Awlfully toxic stuff.

[Steve_C]

Originally Posted by minaret

If you do it right it will look brand new

Be careful about doing too good of a job You may have to do the whole boat to make it match.

[Tom Stewart]

Originally Posted by dennisjay

Awlgrip sells small bottles of some of its paints. But I think it depends on how deep the gouge is. I've experienced the same issue, and just painted it. Looks fine from 15 ft. away.

Thanks for the input Dennis!