Hi, I'm Mark Corke from BoatUS Magazine.
Welcome aboard my boat!
Today I'm going to talk to you about gelcoat.
Now, gelcoat is that shiny surface on the outside of your boat.
Over time it gets dings, it gets scratched, and it gets a few gouges in it that need to
repaired.
So, I've already washed the boat down, and I'm going to walk you through the steps necessary
to make a repair.
Small repairs like this are easily within the realm of a DIY boat owner.
I've got a small ding here in the boat, and if I leave that, moisture is going to get
in.
So all I'm going to do now is just grind this out and fix this, and then we'll end up with
a seamless repair.
You don't need a ton of tools or materials.
I've got a few safety items here: Disposable gloves to keep fiberglass resin off my fingers,
a disposable mask so that when I'm grinding and I have dust and stuff, I don't breathe
that in, and I've got a pair of safety glasses.
Wiping down with acetone gets rid of any surface contaminants, wax and what's left of the dirt
so we don't push that into the repair.
Just slapping on some gelcoat is rarely effective, so to make a proper repair, I've got to open
up this little crack so that the new gelcoat has got something to bite into.
So, for that I'm going to use a Dremel tool.
[Grinding sound] It's important to remember that this is just a cosmetic repair and we
just want to keep the moisture out.
So all I've done is just ground into the gelcoat just down to the laminate and no further.
[Vacuum sound] With the grinding out of the way, I'm just putting some tape down to contain
the repair and make sure we don't splash outside onto the existing gelcoat.
I've decanted some gelcoat into a paper cup.
I'm using precolored gelcoat, but if this were clear gelcoat, I'd have to use a tint
to give it the right color.
I'm now going to add a few drops of catalyst, and it's important to use this exactly in
accordance with the manufacturer's instructions.
I've thoroughly mixed the gelcoat and catalyst together, and all I'm going to do is use my
mixing stick and drop it into the crack and just tap it to make sure that there's no trapped
air bubbles.
I'm obviously using more than I need there, but I'm just going to let it overfill and
leave that to harden, and then I'll come back tomorrow and sand that flush.
I've left the gelcoat to cure overnight and now it's nice and hard.
What I'm going to do now is to sand it flush and for that I'm using 180-grit wet-and-dry
paper wrapped around a block.
We need the block because we want to keep this flat.
If you just use it in your fingers, you'll end up with a ridge, and we don't need that.
[Sanding sound] We'll be done in no time.
So my repair is almost flush now, but what I'm going to do next is just pull up the paper
tape that I put on earlier.
With the tape removed and it sanded down flush, you can already see, or you probably can't
see, that it's still there.
I can feel it slightly with my fingers.
All I'm going to use now is this 600-grit just to remove those scratches from the coarser
paper.
You don't have to go mad with this.
Keep it wet and just sand it backwards and forth.
And there we are.
The repair is just there, but you its barely discernible.
So the sanding's finished and I'm going to wipe the sanding residue off.
And already I think you'd agree that it's starting to look pretty good.
There's the repair, you can just about see it.
But to make it disappear completely, I'm going to use some rubbing compound on that.
This will get rid of any scratch marks from the paper.
I've got my slow-speed buffer, I'm going to spread that around with the pad.
Now this feels really good.
I'm going to just go over that with a bit of glaze to wax and polish and we'll be done.
So my final thing is to give it a nice polish and coat of wax to protect my repair.
I hope you've learned something here today.
Thanks for watching and don't forget to leave us some comments below the video, and for
more great information, tips, techniques, and other information, go to BoatUS.com/Magazine.
Thanks for watching and we'll see you next time.