Suggestions on this gel coat repair

[Naughty98]

So want to know how best to fix these scratches. They aren't deep I bought the boat this way and really want a good winter project.

[bturner]

It really depends on how deep they are. If they are indeed not deep this could be a fairly quick repair with the right tools. Hard to tell from the picture but it would appear they're on a relatively flat surface, so that's good.

I personally like to "sneak up" on these types of repairs using the minimum grit sand paper that will get the job done while removing the minimum amount of material. For something like this I would probably use an air powered DA with1000 grit wet sand paper to see if it would correct the imperfections in a reasonable amount of time/effort. If no joy with 1000, I'd go to 800 but would resist going lower as you can get into trouble quick with 600 and power tools.

The key to doing the correctly is to resist angling the DA to "dig out" the scratches. You'll want to keep the DA flat and move across a wide area to keep from creating waves in the gel coat. For something like this I would be working in overlapping sections 3' wide and 2' down from the affected area. Once the imperfections are removed you'll be able to see how successful you were keeping the surface flat with your initial sanding. I would suspect you'll be going back over it with a long sanding block after to flatten out and "tune" the surface to ensure it is as close to being perfectly flat as possible.

Once you have the surface flat you'll do the typical sanding and polishing sequence to perfect the finish.

You might be able to get away with a battery powered DA but I don't know how well they hold up to water when wet sanding. If you want to go old, old school you could do this by hand with a series of sanding blocks. The challenge here is keeping the surface flat and not creating waves in the gel coat during the sanding process.

[Naughty98]

Yeah wish it was flat it’s at the curve.

[Naughty98]

Another angle

[Naughty98]

I don’t have air tools, I do have an electric PC DA with various sponge pads and a wool pad for buffing. Think I would be kinda scared to use the DA with sandpaper attached with that curve, might be able to get most of it up to that curve being careful.

[bturner]

Yikes, some of that is pretty bad. The problem is that you'd basically have to take everything to the deepest scratches to make it look new again. That would leave you really exposed go going through in spots or having a washboard if you don't.

So that leaves you with having to add gel coat to fill the cracks or using filler then spraying in new gel coat and blending into the existing lower gel coat. A lot of shops would fill/sand the scratches then scuff and shoot the entire side down to the color break as the labor/ materials would be a nit over blending in just the effected area. Its a lot easier to make the color match this way as you would blend into the bow and into the transom.

It may be worth seeing if Spectrum Color has your color and seeing how well it matches. This would be a much more labor intensive effort but like you say you have all winter and you would definitely have plenty of quality time to bond with your boat.....

[Naughty98]

Haven't contacted Spectrum but reached out to Mini-craft to see if they had a color match for the Charcoal. I'm pretty sure that Spectrum has it by the quart/gallon.

So let me see if I'm tracking you correctly. The best way of doing this repair is to either scuff all the scratches and apply gel coat then do the sanding, cutting and polish or scuff and fill all the scratches with filler then spray the whole **** side of the boat and sand, cut and polish to make it right.

I did say I wanted a winter project, just not all winter. I do love to ski on snow on the weekends. :-)

[Rednucleus]

Wow, looks like the dock must have been lined with barbed wire!!

[jpwhit]

That much damage over such a large area is going to be a really big job to repair. Wouldn't be so bad if the scratches where very light and it could just be buffed out, but I think that looks too bad for that to be viable.

[bturner]

I've done small scratches in a 3' wide section by blocking them out but the scratches here are too deep IMO to just block and buff. I also did one boat that had deep scratches like this but that one was concentrated in an area about a foot wide and maybe 4" deep that was caused by a dock post. With that one I mixed up the Spectrum paste and used a flat applicator to level the paste into the scratches then let it cure for a week. Got lucky and had an excellent match. I then blocked the area and repeated the process a couple more times until the low areas were flush when I blocked it. Went through the sanding/polishing process and it was near impossible to see the repair.

If you were going to try to do this in stages this is how I would do it. Yours however will be more difficult due to the damage being on a radius. Getting good match is hit and miss with misses happening much more frequently. Unless you're good at color matching this one is going to need to go to the shop and a good shop at that.

[Naughty98]

Yeah I was afraid of that, the folks we bought this from took really good care of the boat and mentioned how it happened years ago at dock and wasn't noticed until the damage was done. Looks like they tried their best to buff it out but to no avail, its just a war wound they lived with. Yeah not sure if I want to spend the money on a shop doing it. I may try a section closest to the stern and see if I can "not screw it up too bad" attempt at it. Might try it with paste and see how it goes.

[Naughty98]

Wow, looks like the dock must have been lined with barbed wire!!

Tell me about it, it was bumping up against it for a while that is for sure.

[Scooter G]

I'm breaking a sweat just looking at the pictures, them are some nasty war wounds.
I don't think you have much to lose here, any thing will look better than that carnage.
Follow bturner's prescription, but start in a small less obvious area. If I am unsure on how close I'm going to come, I will mix up a few small test batches off the boat, and write down your formulas, gel, hardener, color. Once it's cured, compare you're work. Do I need to go darker, lighter? Even if you score a pre-mixed color matching gel, it will be a little off from boat elements exposure. Once you have the right mix formulation you just repeat the process each time. Your challenge will be keeping a level float in the sanding process, no waves, hills, or valleys. Gel repair is just a lot of patience & time. You may have to do a few areas over again. You are not going to hit it perfect (sometimes), but again anything is going to be better. Do you need to come all the way down to the color break, I wouldn't, unless you are after absolute perfection.
In the end you will be coaching us on how to repair gel, lol. It's a great skill set to have if you own a boat.
Keep us posted...

[Naughty98]

Yeah I think I'll try this part in picture below first to see how close I can get to the right color. I know that both Spectrum and Mini-Craft have the Charcoal in there recipes, its just how far off it is from what I have now. I'm really hoping that its dam close. I'm not looking for pristine but something that doesn't stick out real bad.

[Rednucleus]

The bow pics look more like something that should easily buff out vs the gouges in earlier pics