Before Posting, Please Read Our Posting Guidelines Below.
1. Use the full 4 digit year for everything you are asking your question about. Example: 1962, 1988, 2000, 2011 2. Include the correct name of your Whaler model. Example: Montauk 17, Montauk 170, Outrage 26, Outrage 260 3. Include the length when necessary. Example: 16, 17, 18, 20, 22 4. Do not post your email address anywhere on this site as it is already in your user profile.
I recently got an 85 15 ss. While the hull is structurally sound it has been used hard and has its fair share of nicks, small gouges and spider cracks. It has had a number of poorly performed bondo repairs and several coats of paint applied on top of said repairs. The paint is of unknown type but looks like spray can paint over spray can primer. The gel coat is ok in places (in need of buffing) and thin to non existent in others. My question is what to do? Is it possible to re-gel in the repaired areas or just remove old paint, sand everything down, fill in holes, nicks etc and apply some type of marine paint? I don't have any experience with these paints or gel, but am a pretty good woodworker and have done a bunch of spraying of woodwork. The boat will be mostly a trailer-ed fishing machine so it doesn't need to be pristine just functional and look ok.Ideas and info would be much appreciated. thanks in advance
It depends on how much area you are looking to re-gel. I am not familiar with putting on gelcoat, but I think that to get a good bond to the hull(in the repaired areas) you have to sand down to the fiberglass to make sure of a good bond for the primer and then gelcoat. If the areas are small and only go down to the original gelcoat then you can just touch those up. If you just want functionality, I would just make sure that there are no holes that water can get into the hull from. From what it sounds like I would run it until I was ready to do the work to re-gel or repaint the whole hull(look at the project albums). Someone correct me if I'm wrong on anything.
I've sprayed gelcoat many times and have found that many times you when repairing a nick or gouge, you don't have to go all the way to the glass. Spider cracks are a different story. They'll come right back if you don't go to the glass and use some filler. However you're not wrong for going all the way with a gouge either. It depends on the extent of the damage.Just remember to slightly underfill the repair to make sure you don't sand thru the new gel when finish sanding.
