help gelcote help

[lee]

if 20-25% of my gelcoat needs to be removed from my top deck due to old age and years in the fla sun. have carved all the spider cracks out or do i take all the gel off down to glass or do i just cut out what needs to be and resin and micro beads whole thing and sand back to proper shape

[MOP]

There are variations on how to do it, I am sure a few more of the guys will chime in. I use a Dremmel w/drum sander on small stuff to clean out and feather the cracks and dings. The feathering makes any filler stay stuck, I would sand the surface just as much as needed to get it nice removing down to the glass is not needed. When you do your final sanding do not sand to smooth, if the surface is to smooth the gel coat will not adhere as well it will chip more easily. Everyone I know uses between #50 and #80 grit, once the surface is fair I use the #50 with very light pressure using long over lapping strokes with a DA. I also use a wipe on dye during final finishing to find highs and lows, also wax is present in gel and in most resins the surface should be well washed with a wax remover before you shot the gel. There are many good products to chose from, I use the Evercoat formula 27 as a filler for small stuff. Very easy to work with, will not shrink an will not crack and is water proof. Years back I did a ton of the Donkey prep work for a few a few of best gel guys out here, they taught me that gel coat needs a good tooth to grip the surface properly.

Phil

[Audiofn]

With mine I had probably less then 20% to do and I just sanded off all the gell. Two reasons for doing this. One is I figured that by the time that I ground out all the cracks, filled them in, sanded that back down, faired it out, primed, painted and so on I would have almost the same amount of time into it. Then add to that the idea that I know that back in the day they ussually put way to much gell coat on the boat So my concern with just grinding things out was that by adding more gell coat on top of the already way to much was that it would crack back again. So I sanded and sanded and sanded :D:D