rad1026
Jet Boat Addict
- Messages
- 215
- Reaction score
- 156
- Points
- 117
- Location
- Albuquerque/Havasu
- Boat Make
- Yamaha
- Year
- 2016
- Boat Model
- AR
- Boat Length
- 24
Thought I would go ahead and show this. On the way home from Havasu to Albuquerque a few weeks back my bimini let go from the wake tower and the frame flew around like a kite and hit several areas on the back of the boat. I don't know why it let go, I must not have looped the bimini cover straps over the zipper and the zipper came undone and the whole bimini started flying around. I got four pretty good chips and a torn up bimini. Bummer. Anyway, I took the bimini in to an awning shop and they were able to repair it. They did a really good job, wasn't cheap, but way cheaper then a new bimini.
So I ordered some Spectrum Gel Coat repair paste and thought I would give it a try.
I prepped the chunks by sanding the edges so there were no hard edges. I have done some repairs on my little Hobie cat sail boat in the past and I know with these types of repairs you want the repair to feather in to the existing surface. You are not trying to fill the hole to the edges, hope that makes sense. So I cleaned up the edges and roughed up the area around each hole then cleaned the areas with Acetone and let dry. First off I mixed one tablespoon of the gel with 5 drops of hardener. The instructions say to mix half the jar and 10 drops of hardener. I knew that would be way more than I needed for the repair and started off with just a tablespoon. Still WAY too much. This stuff goes a long way. I just mixed the gel and hardener on a paper plate and used a soft plastic applicator that I have had around for a number of years. You could use the top to a coffee can or something like that just to spread the gel, just cut the soft plastic in a shape that lets you scrape it off the plate and spread evenly on the boat surface.
You can see from my pictures my plastic applicator is pretty beat up. It left ridges in the gel coat. I won't use that old thing again. One thing you can do if you have ridges like this is to take some plastic wrap and place it over the gelcoat and smooth it out. I didn't remember that trick until it had set up too much to do it. So, no big deal. I started standing with 220, then 400, 600, 800, 1000. I need to probably do one more smooth coat, as you can see I think I sanded too far on one of the holes. That is the one that had all the ridges in the initial application and I had to sand too far to get all the ridges out.
The Spectum is really easy to work with. I probably used too much hardener. I think it was about 78 degrees and in the sun when I did this so I could have used a little more time. That hardener, gelcoat mixture is always kind of a guess. I need to get a polishing wheel now to really bring back the gloss, but the initial repair is really not hard.
So I ordered some Spectrum Gel Coat repair paste and thought I would give it a try.
I prepped the chunks by sanding the edges so there were no hard edges. I have done some repairs on my little Hobie cat sail boat in the past and I know with these types of repairs you want the repair to feather in to the existing surface. You are not trying to fill the hole to the edges, hope that makes sense. So I cleaned up the edges and roughed up the area around each hole then cleaned the areas with Acetone and let dry. First off I mixed one tablespoon of the gel with 5 drops of hardener. The instructions say to mix half the jar and 10 drops of hardener. I knew that would be way more than I needed for the repair and started off with just a tablespoon. Still WAY too much. This stuff goes a long way. I just mixed the gel and hardener on a paper plate and used a soft plastic applicator that I have had around for a number of years. You could use the top to a coffee can or something like that just to spread the gel, just cut the soft plastic in a shape that lets you scrape it off the plate and spread evenly on the boat surface.
You can see from my pictures my plastic applicator is pretty beat up. It left ridges in the gel coat. I won't use that old thing again. One thing you can do if you have ridges like this is to take some plastic wrap and place it over the gelcoat and smooth it out. I didn't remember that trick until it had set up too much to do it. So, no big deal. I started standing with 220, then 400, 600, 800, 1000. I need to probably do one more smooth coat, as you can see I think I sanded too far on one of the holes. That is the one that had all the ridges in the initial application and I had to sand too far to get all the ridges out.
The Spectum is really easy to work with. I probably used too much hardener. I think it was about 78 degrees and in the sun when I did this so I could have used a little more time. That hardener, gelcoat mixture is always kind of a guess. I need to get a polishing wheel now to really bring back the gloss, but the initial repair is really not hard.
