Gelcoat Repair Advice

[shavdog]

I've repaired the area on the bow of my typhoon..what I did was take a piece of fiberglas cloth and use the liquid material and hardener...it sealed up the hole very nicely and is rock hard...I then bought some evercoat one step gel coat..applied a few coats to even out the differences and sanded in between...the shape looks great but I need to spray on a finish coat...I dont have any spray equipment and I am looking for advice...On the gel coat can it does say you can dilute that product to spray...do they sell some kind of small inexpensive preloaded sprayer that I could use or is there something else in the form of paint I may try...its slightly offwhite where I'm trying to go but an exact color match is pretty much impossible so something close is ok too...any recommendations...thanks..craig

[bhartley]

I used a disposable Preval sprayer to complete a small gelcoat repair. You have to thin it quite a bit with acetone (the recommended solvent for the product I was using) and do very thing layers to avoid drips.

I had to make the coating thicker than I intended and then wet sanded to make it flush and blend with the surrounding area.

[Oswego John]

...I then bought some evercoat one step gel coat..applied a few coats to even out the differences and sanded in between..

.the shape looks great but I need to spray on a finish coat...I dont have any spray equipment and I am looking for advice...On the gel coat can it does say you can dilute that product to spray...

do they sell some kind of small inexpensive preloaded sprayer that I could use or is there something else in the form of paint I may try......any recommendations...thanks..craig

Craig,

Do you have a portable compressor, or can you borrow one? There is a source which many use that has a large variety of compressors and spray guns, of all prices and qualities from DIY to professional.

www.harborfreight.com

Type in keyword SPRAY GUNS and then Compressors.

There is one item that you may be interested in. It is a refillable areosol type can for spraying paint and other various types of liquids.

Type in #1102-3VGA

Also available is a 110V electric, hand held unit. I owned one of these units many years ago and it performed pretty nicely for doing odd jobs.

Type in #47274-2VGA

Good luck,
O J

[Kurt]

I refinished my companionway sliding hatch and am quite pleased with the results. I used a small detail spray gun I purchased from Harborfrieght as OJ mentioned. However, I drilled out the hole in the tip to about 3mm. You need a big hole in the tip. The typical paint tip is 1.5mm or smaller. Gelcoat is suppose be thinned only 10-15% with acetone or MEK which still leaves it quite thick and viscous. That's why you need to drill the tip out. Professional use gelcoat sprayers have very large tips.
To use a Prevail sprayer, you need to thin the gelcoat 40-50% which is way beyond what the experts say is ideal. I've sprayed it both ways (thick & thin) and frankly, I don't see the difference in the end result. The bottome line is that any way you slice it, spraying gelcoat is a tricky process for the DIY'r and can only be described as a big pain in the @#$@! Maybe someone else on the board knows more about it?

[Tynaje]

I send my owners to http://www.minicraft.com/
Click on the aerosol gelcoat video on the right hand column. Those guys are the best and will talk you through the entire process. They can also provide you with the original color gelcoat.