This is terrible advice. The combination of formalin and the sponge of a Magic Eraser will permanently remove the gloss from your ABS Plastic boat. Don’t do it. Buy a real polishing compound made for acrylic. Try Novus Polish.
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Some raft guides were taking a new ww raft to a trade show to drum up business. They decided to use armorall to shine the boat up and make it look pretty. Problem was, when they took it down the New River Gorge, everyone kept sliding off the tubes and out of the boat.
A word about 303… I use it a couple times a year and like it, but there’s a word of warning that should go with it. You may have heard somewhere that an object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. Freshly applied 303 can occasionally cause an object at rest to go rogue and disregard that law, in utter contempt of the declarations of the physicists.
When you’ve just unloaded your boat at that gently sloping grassy launch site, with the dew laying fresh on the ground, or on steeper banks of well-rounded river gravel, and you’re heading back to the car for the paddles, PFD, and such… keep an eye on your boat. That object at rest may try to launch itself without you. It might cost you launching style points if there were such a thing. Not every time, but sometimes. Don’t ask how I come to remark on this.
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I prefer Meguiars(?) Yacht wax . I’ve seen too many 303 slicks on the water.
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On the underside of my high density polyethylene kayak I use an old toothPreformatted textbrush and soap to clean the deep scratches/gouges and then using scrap HDP, the same colour as my kayak, melt them in, heating my spatula with a handheld hot air blower. To protect the underside from bow to stern from underwater and shoreline rocks and barnacles, I use Gorilla tape. This is my preparation for the coming season.
I found myself cringing a lot when I paddled my Eddyline. It’s the curse of owning a pretty boat, and Eddyline’s finish is just gorgeous. You get all the looks at the put in, but you also think about scratches a lot more, I feel.
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For the hull I use a hull cleaner with oxalic acid in it. Remarkably fast and easy. Wipe it on and rinse it off after a minute or two. A stubborn scum line can build up pretty quickly on the Chesapeake Bay and especially on the smaller creeks. For the deck I used fiberglass restorer about once a year (my Kevlar boat is 22 years old). In the unlikely event it get some tar, sap, or something similar on it I’ll spot clean these with acetone or something similar. Finish up the whole boat with 303®. Applied correctly I’ve never seen a slick on the water with 303® as some have mentioned. Any quality marine or automotive cleaner or wax will work perfectly well on the boat as well. The manufacturer recommends reapplying 303® every month of so depending on sun exposure and how often you use the boat. Only takes a few minutes.
If dishwashing soap and a drywall sponge doesn’t get all the scuzz off, I use bar Keepers friend and an old Dobie that has been retired from the kitchen sink. If it is too worn to clean dishes it is about right for the hulls of my boats.
I will admit to my hate of plastic boats. I don’t have any anymore. I have one true Kevlar boat, two mixed weave of aramid and carbon, and three wooden boats. All have had a couple of coats of varnish on them. The clear coat of epoxy on the expensive boats gets eaten by UV after a while. I varnish them with Z-spar, Pettit, or Epiphane varnish to give UV protection.
If the scuzz is too bad I will sand the boat and re-varnish them.
I don’t use any wax because they just wash off, as does 303. I used to use 303 when I came home and cleaned things. It seems to stay stuck to the boat better if it can set-up for a few days.
I used 303 from the start on my Nighthawk hull and hatches and I didn’t have covered storage so the poor boat sat outside year round. The 303 really works. I’d just soap and water the boat in the spring, re-coat with 303 and do the same once or twice through the season. Good stuff.