TOPIC: painting or wet sanded and polished

How to tell if your boat needs painted or wet sanded and polished? Got a question , I need answered. Got a older bass boat last year . wasn't taking care of .trying to tell if its too far gone for wet sanded and polished?

Welcome aboard BigBlue, you have to try to sand it, what I did is take a small section and wet sand with 1000 or 1500, buff with polish compound, wax. Does it look good, no then 800,1000, polish, wax. I would then go 400 max, if that don't fix it paint, you have nothing to lose, my Waconda came out great, my Pacific Mariner not as well. Also different surfaces need different levels of sanding, top flat needed more than sides since less sun, also VERY careful on ANY curves, I over did some curves on the bow, I thought it was corrosion but it was the fiber glass under the gel coat and I messed it up, use 1000 and hand sand very careful and learn on the transom or somewhere you don't see as well, by the time I got to the bow and dash I was an expert.
Before and After

Thanks for info . my biggest problem is the cracks. They're some 1/8 inch deep. And its metal flake . some areas has changed to silver

bigblue5150,

1st WELCOME ABOARD.

You may as well bite the bullet, sand off all of the surface, fill all the cracks/dings & then re-gelcoat/repaint, as polishing/waxing won't fix the problem in 99.99% of such cases.

yours, satx

Just depends on what you can get buy with, I have some stress cracks and may look for a touch up product but I'm not building show boats, I want them to look like they are 5 years old and not 50 so for me it's just what I get by with. Also I want my boats updated, new instruments etc with an old style flair but modern technology.

Poorly maintained metal flake is at the very best, very difficult to revive, w/out pix it'd be hard to say for sure, but from your description, the gelcoat isnt going to come back. Follow SATXs advise, esp if you can feel the flakes anywhere on the hull's surface

if it has cracks 1/8 deep, the gel is shot...I wouldn't use any wax as wax soaked into the bottom of those cracks can cause a lot of grief in a redo...john

redfishpirates,

EXACTLY CORRECT. = As I see it, the owner can "live with" the bad current hull's appearance or do a full re-gelcoating/repainting & have a SHOW-PIECE.

just my OPINION, satx

The tips you received referring to wet sanding with 1000 is good advice. Keep in mind metal flake is really difficult to bring back but it can be done depending on a few factors like how thick the gel coat or paint was, how many times it's been sanded or buffed previously etc.
Lets pretend you have two boats with the same exact thickness of gel coat. One has metal flake and one doesn't. The one without flake can be sanded down as far as there is still enough material left so as not to get too close to the underlying fiberglass. The boat with the flake has the same thickness of gel but has flakes of metal suspended in the gel. Therefore you can only remove very small amounts of material before you break through into the actual flake itself.
Flake paint jobs are not cheap either. I redid an older Checkmate some years ago. I wet sanded very lightly until I could actually feel the roughness of the flake. Couldn't bring it back so I decided to just lightly wet sand the entire boat and just clear coat over the top. It didn't look like a fresh paint job but it looked damn good.

Well thanks for being direct . how do you sand? Wet or dry? And how do you know how deep? I've never messed with flakes .

I sanded in the wet, here in washington it was raining so I put on rain gear and used wet dry sand paper, have a bucket and some rags, get it wet, I used a squirt bottle with water and a little soap, i sanded in a back and forth till it feels like it's loading up, then wipe with a wet rag, rinse the paper in the bucket so its clean, don't waste time sanding when it's loaded up, it does nothing. repeat till you get to the 1500 or 1000 paper.
Then I used my California blade squeegee, then dry towel, look close, if it's pretty smooth and good color, then I would do the polishing compound which is a liquid squeeze bottle. Just do a maybe 3-4 foot section at a time, then I waxed when all done for the day, that might be just 1/2 the boat but I didn't want that gelcoat open incase I didn't get back to it.

You might want to start just by compounding with a machine. Especially if you're not familiar with sanding. Buffing and sanding both do the same basic thing. They remove layers of bad paint exposing layers of good paint underneath. Like exfoliating your skin. I used to be strictly a 3M product guy. However, over the past year, I've grown to really like BuffMagic. It's a progressive compound. Meaning it starts off pretty aggressive and gets finer as you work it. Think of it as starting out as a compound and slowly turning into a polish. If you're a novice (or not), it takes the guess work out of what to use. Use a good wool pad and start on a slow speed in about a 2'x2' area. I'm a Chris Craft guy and early CC glass boats had very good quality and thick gel coat. Results are usually pretty stunning.
This is a 66 Chris Craft Corsair Castaway with original gel coat

No polish or compound in the world will help flake gelcoat that's got 1/8" cracks in it.

Remove and replace or repair and paint

We are talking an old bass boat here, not an XK-19. My advice is based on trying to make an old bass boat look good. Not win first place in Dora.
It is what it is.

So I think I'm gonna just do the repair and replace . sounds easier and quicker . thanks guys for y'alls help. Oh by the way how do you know Dora?

craigjudge wrote:

We are talking an old bass boat here, not an XK-19. My advice is based on trying to make an old bass boat look good. Not win first place in Dora. It is what it is.

I understand that, but most often when the same question is asked, no, they almost always WANT a compound or polish recommendation that WILL bring back old, cracked metal flake gelcoat and at present that product doesn't exist. Although that isn't the case here, someone else might find this later and think they can save the cracked flake gelcoat.

IMO, polishing gelcoat that the owner states has 1/8" cracks, is a futile waste of time & materials. It also make a difficult prep job for repair and paint, even more difficult. So unwise for several reasons.

Yep, an old bass boat is an old bass boat, but it also deserves the best advice we can give. And as an aid for those that follow us into boat rehab, to find.

Sounds like you've got an action plan started, BigBlue, let us see some before and after pix once you start working on it.

I highly recommend a quality oil based enamel w/ enamel hardener added to it for paint when it's time. Roll & roll, roll & tip and sprayed will all give great results w/ good paint prep.

I tried to post pics but it won't let me. Maybe I'll have it figured out by the time I'm done. Thanks again guys for the advice. Post ya later.

craigjudge,

WELCOME ABOARD.

yours, satx

Hi Bigblue,
If you images are too big ?
Try this: it worked to resize and post here.

www.webresizer.com/resizer/

bigblue...I just use paint on my pics...not over 2040 by 2040 pixels and a jpg image john

bigblue5150 wrote:

I tried to post pics but it won't let me. Maybe I'll have it figured out by the time I'm done. Thanks again guys for the advice. Post ya later.

Try using photobucket thats what I use

just an example

Ok guys I come to the fork in the road . I'm fixing to sand an prep for painting. My Question is exactly what kind of paint and where do I get it? Remember on a budget and its still an ole bass boat . oh by the way still can't get pics to load it keeps saying not enough memory ?

Your paint selection depends mainly on how long you plan to leave the boat in the water. Anything longer than a few days (3 or 4) and you'll need to use a paint designated for below the water line. If it's going to be trailered out the majority of the time, many of us have had good success using Rustoleum or oil based implement paint and Valspar (or equivalent) hardner.

In the upper right hand corner of your screen is the "Search Forum" box. Type paint, or Rustoleum in there and it will bring up every thread on the subject for you to research. There are a couple threads in the main forum going on right now on that very subject!

There is also a thread in the Support Forum that is very helpful on posting pics. I suspect you will need to resize them down to a smaller size.
www.fiberglassics.com/fiberglassics-forums/home/support/how-to-post-pictures

You picked a good example Ronnie , also you can just right click on the image on your PC if using windows and choose "Edit", then choose "resize" and do 50% that always works for me.
Steve

That maybe my issue. I'm using my phone