Vinyl and Gel Coat repair?

silvery2kgt · Newbie Joined: 17 Jun 2005 Posts: 35 City: Louisville

I have a couple blemishes I need to take care of, but with so many products offered I have not been able to find one thats proven.

I have two small spots in the vinyl about the size of a pea and a gel coat gouge about 6 inches long.

Anyone have experience with repair products for these?

p.s. - vinyl is white and gel coat is blue.

swilly · Soul Rider Joined: 06 Sep 2005 Posts: 362 City: Eugene

If the gel coat is faded at all, removing the scratch may make that area look better than the rest of the boat.

Basically, you wet sand the scratch out of the gel coat. Its pretty easy to do. But first you'll have to determine if its repairable. The nicer boats usually have a thicker gel coat so its easy to sand down. You'll also need to check the depth of the scratch, if you rub your fingernail along and the scratch really catches your fingernail, its probably too deep to "completely" repair.

Also, if any of you has full coverage insurance on your boat, you can have insurance cover the repair to have the whole boat polished and repaired of scratches! The boat repair people love it too!

snowboardcorey · Posted: Apr 08, 2006 8:34 am Post subject:

Many scratches are totally wet sandable. Depending on how deep the scratch goes you may always have a small indent that is noticable in the right ligt, but which looks much better than the scratch. If the scratch is through the gel coat you will most likely need to have the area resprayed. You can look into a patch kit but the chance of matching the color perfectly is pretty low, even if you get a patch kit from the maker of your boat.

To wet sand, you will need 1200 and 2000 grit sand paper, a spray bottle of water and a buffer to finish the job. 1200 knocks the scratch down, 2000 removes most of the small scratches made by the 1200 and the buffer knocks out the really small scratches left by the 2000.

drifter36 · Addict Joined: 25 Aug 2003 Posts: 679 City: Fargo

I just had some work done to my boat(actualy alot of work i.e. fix some big scratches/holes and have the complete boat repainted and gelcoat) I had somebody else do that, but the vynal repair i did myself prety easy to do, but can go wrong fast, Im lucky enough to have had some practice so it turned out very well. I will try to post some pics tomorow of the before and after of some white vynal I did. or if you hire somebody to do it, it wont be as expensive as the gelcoat will be to hire out to be done.