Re: Friscoboater's 1986 Glastron Carlson CVX-18 Complete restoration thread
Ok, so this has been a very frustrating past few days with a little setback. I started sanding and polishing the gel coat last weekend, and it went beautifully. the boat just looked stunning... BUT!!! Yesterday I had a few placed that I needed to touch up after almost 30 years of abuse. I went to my supplier and got a quart of white gel, a quart of black gel, some tinting gel in various colors, and some metal flake to mach my boat. My plan was to mix up some gel to fill some small holes and then sand and buff it to match. I started out with the black with some flake mixed in and applied it to some small holes and let it dry. Once cured I went back and sanded it down and polished it out with some decent results, but I could still see the shadow of the hole if you looked... more on that later. I then moved to the grey areas, and mixed up a dead on match, and filled some pits on the port side of the boat. Once again I let it cure and then sanded it down flat for polishing... except... when doing this I sanded through the grey to the underling layer of black... ARRRRRRRGH!!!!! No worries, I had alot left over from the mix, so I thinned out some of the grey, taped off the area and sprayed the grey all over the area. After about tow hours I went back, sanded the gel, and polished. WOOOOOOW!!!! It looked unbelievable, and you could not see the repair at all! I was soooo stoked that I went around and did all the grey areas with the same technique and all of the results are just stunning. This is where things went terribly wrong...
I thought to myself... if the grey looked that good... then the black mixed with flake will look good too! So I went to mixing up some black with flake, masked off the areas and sprayed the black. Out of the gun it looked awesome, and I could not wait to polish it out and move on. Not so fast. After about three hours I came back and started to sand out the black, and right away I noticed how hard it was to sand this stuff. The sand paper stuck to it like crazy and it just felt like you were sanding gum. Well after hours of doing this on all the patches, I decided to try and polish it out. Bad move one again. Th areas around the patch buffed out beautifully, but the blend area and the patch itself stayed somewhat dull, and sticky. I really did not know where to go from here. I sat down and had a beer and was staring at the cans of gel coat and noticed something. The white gel coat which I used to make the grey color had wax in it, and the black did not!!! BINGO!!!! Gel coat patches MUST have wax in them so they cure all the way so you can sand an polish them.
So, here we were with sticky gel coat all over the place, and we had to get it off. We spent three hours getting all that crap off, and now I am back to square one. Through all this I have created more work because I now have to spray some more black with flake in some places that I sanded though, but I think I have a plan. Tell if this sounds right.
1. Re-sand the area and clean with acetone for adhesion.
2. Spray thinned black gel coat (without wax) to gain the color back
3. Spray clear gel with flake in it (without wax) to gain the flake back
4. Spray a good thick coat of clear gel WITH WAX for the final coat.
5. Sand, then polish.
This has almost been a full day and a half wasted, and I hope my new plan works. It is not like it is that bad, but you know me.
-vlad
