This illustrates the gelcoat damage my boat has. It is very minor spider cracking near my compass and what appears to be a nick in the gelcoat. If you look closely you can see the fiberglass through the crack.
I started out by lightly sanding down the rough edges with 220 sandpaper.
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I used a dremel tool to dig out the crack and get the rough edges all the way out. It is not shown here but I also used a bottle opener with the deep V to dig out the spider cracks. Apparently, gel coat cannot fit between the small crevices of the spider crack so you must give it something to bond to. Once you dig this out do not sand too much or you will sand out the crevice you just created.
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Taped off my area I was going to work on with masking tape. Follow the directions on adding the hardener to the gelcoat mix. Too much and it can bubble and crack.
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I cut open the bottom of a water bottle and mixed the hardener up. Kiss your brush goodbye so use a cheap one.
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After painting on the gel coat, I made several passes over the deeper spots to build up a layer over the crack as it slowly was hardening. Then I made a mistake, apparently when you are suppose to cover the gelcoat with a piece of plastic so it can cure you are NOT suppose to use cling wrap. Cling wrap is not completely flat it has little tiny bubbles all over its surface and causes an uneven surface when its peeled off. Zip lock bags or saran wrap should work.
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This was the aftermath. Took about 1.5 hours to cure.
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I sanded away at the surface with 400 then 800 wet dry sandpaper and kept mild amounts of water on it.
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This is the finished result and I feel it turned out pretty well. Keep in mind if I did not have to do the extra sanding to get the dimples from the cling wrap off it would not be slightly so close to the fiberglass. In the end I will do one more coat on this spot.
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