I've done a bit of gel coat repair on my 1997 Trophy 2002WA, usually spider cracks and a few hole repairs after removing a transducer etc.
Yesterday I had a large spider crack to fix, just below the aft stbd chock. Of course you must make the cracks bigger in order to get the gel to fill. I use my Dremel tool for this with the round pointed grinding tool.
I use TAP Plastics gel coat, and their video shows that you can use a piece of Mylar plastic over the gel to make it fill the crack and makes the gel coat dry on the outside. Gel coat does not surface harden so you need either the release agent or the Mylar sheet.
I never had any Mylar sheets so yesterday I stumbled onto an alternative. I had a roll of that silver duct tape used to seal air ducts on your heat/AC system.
Basically, don't peel the paper backing off, just use the silver side and put it over the wet gel coat. Then use something flat to go over the tape in one direction to smooth out the gel.
Works awesome and after the gel sets "but before it cures (time depending on which manuf. you use) pull the tape off and you have pretty much a flat surface of new gel coat!
I'll try and post some pics when I do some more after the rain goes away
Seriously cuts down on the amount of wet sanding since the new gel is already flat.
Yesterday I had a large spider crack to fix, just below the aft stbd chock. Of course you must make the cracks bigger in order to get the gel to fill. I use my Dremel tool for this with the round pointed grinding tool.
I use TAP Plastics gel coat, and their video shows that you can use a piece of Mylar plastic over the gel to make it fill the crack and makes the gel coat dry on the outside. Gel coat does not surface harden so you need either the release agent or the Mylar sheet.
I never had any Mylar sheets so yesterday I stumbled onto an alternative. I had a roll of that silver duct tape used to seal air ducts on your heat/AC system.
Basically, don't peel the paper backing off, just use the silver side and put it over the wet gel coat. Then use something flat to go over the tape in one direction to smooth out the gel.
Works awesome and after the gel sets "but before it cures (time depending on which manuf. you use) pull the tape off and you have pretty much a flat surface of new gel coat!
I'll try and post some pics when I do some more after the rain goes away
Seriously cuts down on the amount of wet sanding since the new gel is already flat.
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