Restoring Paint or New Paint Job?

[dubnvento]

I have a 1965 Larson All American 14ft Fiberglass boat I would like the color to come back to or repaint it. The paint on the upper half of the boat is chalky and I tried polishing it out with 3M Rubbing compound then Polishing compound and then wax and that didn't work. Could the paint glissen again?

I have considered repainting because there are some areas that need to be repaired because they have deep guages in them. What would be the process to do this myself.

Thanks

 

[salty87]

Re: Restoring Paint or New Paint Job?

you probably have gel coat on there and not paint. when you look at the guages, is the color a little deeper than you'd expect with paint? gel coat is sprayed similar to the fiberglass process. if you have a nice layer left, you can wet sand away the nasty layers and expose fresh gel coat. you could always wet sand a spot to see how it goes if you're thinking about painting anyway.

do some searches and read around. this is a fairly common topic. there are some pics around of paint jobs, they take alot of time as does the wet sanding route.

 

[gcboat]

Re: Restoring Paint or New Paint Job?

Here's a little article that gives a pretty decent explanation of restoring your gel coat: http://www.boatus.com/boattech/casey/01.htm

 

[EllGuapo79]

Re: Restoring Paint or New Paint Job?

You may also be interested in getting a custom boat wrap instead of airbrushing... check out SignZoo.com's boat graphics section if you're interested... although I guess you're going to have to fix the guages yourself.