Re: Help restoring badly oxidized bass boat flake finish.
What type of clear coating are you looking at? Is it HI-UV clear gel or Automotive Clear urethane?..either will work, but you need to have the necessary equiptment to apply it properly. At a minimum, you need a compressor with at adequate CFM....10+cfm at 90psi should work with alot of spray guns, hoses, inline air dryer and regulator. If its the gel coat, you can use a resin/gel coat gun to shoot the poly...a standard HVLP spray gun for urethane clears.
You will also need to strip off most of the hardware, glove box, ect so you can prep all the way to the edges to avoid edge peel.
If this is more than you want to get into, then just polish it up the best you can, and go fishing
If you want refinish it with clear, the steps would be:
1) Remove all hardware, seat backs if you can, and any other items that overlap the surface, that includes those screw in snaps in your pic. Tape everything of with painting tape and plastic.
2) wash the surface with soap and water, Use a surface cleaner (wax/grease remover) I posted above. This product is used to "lift" off contaminates before sanding. You apply it with a quality spray bottle, while its still wet, wipe in one direction with a clean shop paper towel (not the fuzzy home ones with flowers and stuff)..If you keep reusing the same cloth, you will but the contaminates back on the surface, so change it often.
3) Wet sand it lightly with a ultra fine grit wet/dry sandpaper, use a sanding pad so u get an flat finish without finger grooves. All those sharp edges will lose their color fast if u sand over them. Sand up to them from the panel over the edge just slightly. Same goes for final buffing with a wheel.
4) wipe the surface with acetone or alchohol to remove the fine particles. Let it flash off and avoid touching the surface from here on in.
5)Adjust your spray gun to a fan spray about the width of your thumb and pinky finger spread out in the hang ten sign..about 6 inches and test it on a piece of paper or cardboard.
6) lay down 2-3 wet coats of clear, wet sanding between coats if needed to remove orange peel, and stuff the will fall/land in the finish. Leave it in the sun to set up and harden before you do a final buff and polish with your 3m products. I wait weeks.
This was for urethane clear. For clear gel, the procedure is significantly different.
