Small, but long, scratches/digs, can you ignore

Hi, I have a question. I recently scratch the &*%$ out of my hull when a rubber rolling wheel went missing from my trailer and I did not know untill I tried to trailer it. What a bad noise.

Anyway, the scatch is fairly deep, well into the glass, but still looks superficial. At what point is this a structual issue? Can I just ignore the scratch or do I need to fix them? The boat is 20+ years old and I'm not all that concerned about what the underside of the hull looks like, I can't see it right? LOL. But if might cause a crack or worse, I would like to know,

Thanks!

Re: Small, but long, scratches/digs, can you ignore

If it's not leaking water, it's cosmetic.

If it got through the gelcoat down to the glass, it might leak slowly or cause delamination over time, so I'd patch it. If you don't care if the colors match, this is very easy. If it's not to the glass, it's still not a bad idea to patch it since further damage there may cause a leak.

Get some white Marine-tex putty, mix a little at a time to be sure you're not overdoing it, and press it into the crack. Once the crack is full, scrape the rest off the surface with a piece of flexible plastic or cardboard. You should just have the putty in the crack with maybe a tiny bit on the surface.

Fill the whole crack this way. You don't have to do it all at once, Marine-tex will stick regardless.

If you scrape the excess off cleanly you'll need very little or no sanding to clean it up. The marine tex will stand up to trailer rollers or dings about as well as the gelcoat will.

Erik

Re: Small, but long, scratches/digs, can you ignore

Take a good look at it and see if it cut any fiberglass fibers...... if no....you are okay. Get a gelcoat patch kit and start the repair....... check all your rollers so you do not repeat this lesson.

Re: Small, but long, scratches/digs, can you ignore

Thanks for the replies. I'll get some marine-tex. Is that fiber repair or gel-coat? I think it did get into the fiber. Not allot, but some.

Lession learned....... although I'm not sure what I would have done if I had known the roller was missing. It was getting dark and I would have had to trailer the boat anyway. I guess I could have found something rubber, cloth, plastic to wrap he metel with.

Re: Small, but long, scratches/digs, can you ignore

If it happens again, I'd recomment using a piece of wood or hard rubber to cover the metal edges.. something soft like cloth would just get cut through.

Marine-tex comes in two kinds, white and gray. White is for repairing anything glass, gelcoat, plastic, whatever, and gray is for metal and machinery.

Neither one is perfect for replacing gelcoat since they're not as shiny or color matched, but on the bright side they're strong enough to be structural, so if you went down to the glass, no problem.

The only downside is that you can't easily gelcoat over the stuff if you want to do that later, you'd have to grind/sand it out and do the repair over using poly resin.

Erik