Hello,
I know it may seem like a waste of time, but I would like to repair all the spider cracks I have scattered around my boat. Since I’m doing a repair and am buying gel coat anyway, I thought I might as well. The two main methods I am debating between are using a dremel to sand out the individual cracks , some light sanding, and then filling and blending with new gel coat, or the other option is just sanding until through where the crack was, which requires removing a greater area of gel coat. I’m guessing a second option may be better for a smoother blend but I feel like it may be more difficult on areas where I need to keep a shape such as my compass mount and I feel it may be over kill for some of the smaller out of the way cracks. Any thoughts on which I should use? Or should I use a combination.
Thanks for any advice! I am new to this
I would not strive for perfection because you are not going to get it. You will never get anything close to an exact color match no matter what.
Trying to gutter out fine spider cracks and then fill them in with gel coat that is inevitably going to be a somewhat different color is only going to make them more obvious. Nor would I personally denude a large area of gel coat and then try to replace it, but maybe you are better at getting a smooth surface and fair contour with gel coat than I am.
Personally, I would remove any fragments of gel coat that seem to have delaminated and are loose, gutter the edges of gel coat that is intact, fill in the voids with gel coat, and be happy with it. I have gel coated canoes that have exterior spider cracking that has not gotten any worse after a couple of decades.
Is this the same boat as in your other thread? If so, I have questions.
Did you buy that boat new? The cracks(?) that you show don’t look like any gelcoat cracks I have ever seen. They look like flaking paint; like someone tried to cover a problem. Figure out if it is paint or gelcoat.
If it is gelcoat I would use captain Tolleys and fill the cracks, if there are no signs of a deeper delamination.
Gelcoat is the only thing waterproof on most commercial boats. The polyester resin used to hold them together isn’t waterproof and cracked gelcoat can hold water to create a problem.
If you take a flashlight to the inside and see any black spots, you have other problems.
Check that first.
Hello!
Yes it is the same boat as the one in my other thread. I think I may take a video and leave a link to it for you and other to look at if that would be alright, I am inexperienced with this. I know the gel coat is original, maybe it’s not actually gel coat which could be a problem but I’m not sure how to tell between gel coat and paint. I know the boat has had some repairs from the previous owner but they were on the inside. I don’t think I saw any black spots but I will double check.
The spider cracks in the photo on your other thread look absolutely typical of the gel coat cracking I have seen on other boats. If someone had painted over intact gel coat, the color match would never have been perfect and you should see an obvious difference on the broken edges of gel coat. If you have any doubt, you could sand the edge of the broken gel coat down. A layer of paint over gel coat would become quite apparent due to the color difference.