Beginner vinyl wraps his boat

[mattsmall1972]

I have this new-to-me-boat, a 2005 Panga with a 2011 Suzuki 175 fourstroke. The hull is awesome, the engine is in new condition, but the boat wasn't maintained like I prefer. The hull had been banged up a bit and repaired, but the gelcoat was still nicked up and didn't match.

I'd written in a couple of previous threads about painting and gelcoat match, but after a bit of attempting to gelcoat match, and having to do some serious sanding on it to get it back to a good state, I decided to vinyl wrap my boat.

I found a website with good prices and decided late one night to go with orange. This is my story.

 

[GA_Boater]

Was that Chapter 1, Matt?

Hope you post pics.

 

[mattsmall1972]

This is my boat before I vinyl wrapped it. It wasn't horrible, but not awesome. I don't need my boat to be in new, perfect condition, but I do want it to look like I take care of it.

Nicks and scratches:

 

[mattsmall1972]

I ordered some vinyl wrap from CarWrapSupplier.com (note: I do not work for them nor am I affiliated in any way). I got the 5 foot wide orange gloss wrap. I wanted only to do the top part of my hull, and I knew that 5 foot was far too much, but the price was right and I figured I could save what I didn't use. This is what I ended up with on Friday, September 25 from Fedex:

This is the 5-ft wide wrap at 60 foot of length, along with a 3m squeegee, two felt tops and glue for the squeegee, a roll of wrapcut, and a razor blade in there somewhere. The wrapcut is a thin strip of tape that you put underneath the vinyl. When you're done wrapping, you pull it up and it cuts the vinyl where it laid.

Close up of the tools.

I glued one felt strip to the squeegee.

Since I knew that I didn't need so much wrap, I decided to cut the 5-foot vinyl roll into two 2.5 foot rolls.

Now I have two rolls of vinyl.

 

[mattsmall1972]

The wrap:

I prepped my boat by filling in some nicks with gelcoat paste (as I said previously, badly matched) which aren't in the picture above. This hull has been repeatedly washed with green scrub pad, Barkeeper's Friend, and Dawn dish soap, so there should be no wax on it. Just before I started the wrap, I wiped it down with denatured alcohol.

I hung the vinyl wrap over the boat. 60 foot of 2.5 foot wrap is a lot to do, but I tried to follow the instructions like you see on youtube.

With there being so much wrap I wasn't going to need hanging down, I then trimmed it:

 

[mattsmall1972]

Wrapping this in one complete sheet was going to be impossible for me without a SERIOUS ton of wrinkles and bubbles. I started down this path trying to do it like they do on youtube but realized I am just not equipped with the fine dexterity skills to make this happen. Also making the wrap more difficult for me was the lip of the hull where it approaches the rubrail. I'd decided to wrap the lip as well because it would cover more nicks and scratches. You can see it in the picture below.


I then decided to test one sheet of vinyl on top of another to see how it looked. I was pleased with the result. This is how I was after doing about 4 or 5 2-foot wide strips of vinyl, one overlapped with the other, and trimmed top and bottom:

My wife was looking at this saying that everyone was going to give me a wide berth, thinking I was the Coast Guard.

 

[mattsmall1972]

After about 2 hours of overlapping one over the other, I finished the port side. I'd thrown a few sheets of vinyl away because I'd wrinkled them up so much, but it was ok since I had so much. I decided to trim the lip off and this made everything much easier to wrap, and less like a Coast Guard boat.

Because it looked so good, I decided to put on my registration numbers and name. I still have to do the other side. I am very happy with this result.

The name:

When I'm done, I will finish off with a vinyl edge dressing to prevent it from peeling, then polish and wax of the rest of the hull.

 

[JameO]

Well I have to admit ,that I was puzzled at the beginning of this thread. I wasn't sure where this was going. And how it was going to turn out. But seeing it now , wow it does look good. Keep posting pics till your done , looks awesome.

 

[Rick Stephens]

Looks great. Coast Guard colors huh? Make sure you wear yer body armor if yer fishin in the smugglers cove :topsy_turvy:

Rick

 

[mattsmall1972]

Thanks for the comments. I am looking forward to getting the hull into a nice condition in the next couple of days. I've found that wet sanding the hull goes a LONG LONG way towards making it shiny again. Between the vinyl and the shiny bottom, it will be in great shape for the next few years, until I decide to change colors.

I will say that it will be easy to repair this if I get a really bad nicked up section. I can simply cut the section out with a razor blade and put a new one right in place over the bare hull again with no worries. It's amazing that you can only barely see the seams where the two sections overlap, and you have to be close to see it.

 

[Rick Stephens]

Take a close up of one of your seams. I'd love to see it.

Rick

 

[mattsmall1972]

Side angle of the boat for reference:

Close up of a seam. You can see that I just randomly cut it with a razor blade. With straight edges, it will really be nice.

 

[Rick Stephens]

Wow. Invisible from a few feet away. Nice.

 

[littlerayray]

Not sure about the cg colors but it looks great

 

[mattsmall1972]

I really didn't intend for it to look like a coast guard boat, but I admit that I've always liked the look. I hope they don't expect me to go out saving people and busting drug runners every day now.

 

[Rick Stephens]

Needs blue lights on top. Maybe a Ma Deuce in the bow.

 

[mattsmall1972]

I was seriously thinking about a nice blue stripe on the bottom. I might get in real trouble though.

 

[Tnstratofam]

Nice job on the wrap. It looks good, and has given me some ideas on how to add replacement stripes to our ski boat..

 

[mattsmall1972]

I've love to see what you're going to do with your boat. Is it the one in the signature?

 

[Tnstratofam]

The Starcraft in my signature is our fishing boat. I redid the transom in her last year and we've had her on the water ever since. Our ski boat is the Stratos that you see in my avatar. She has been in our garage since aug of 2013 patiently waiting to be restored. She's gonna get a new deck, stringers, and possibly repower hopefully later this year.