Q1: in the New-Jersey-to-Connecticut corridor, what vendor or artisan is skilled in gel coat repair with blistering and has earned your trust?
BACKSTORY
Hi. I am very long-time reader and now first-time poster. I have a 1969 Nauset; I am the second owner. The boat is generally in excellent shape, but the gel coat below the waterline has started to show blistering. We love the boat and want to invest in repairing it to excellent condition.
Gel Coat Blister Repair in the Northeast
Re: Gel Coat Blister Repair in the Northeast
I can't endorse a vendor or artisan in your region, but I can offer some advice about what to expect will be necessary to have done to restore the hull gel coat blisters.
Hull gel coat blisters are typically a result of osmotic blistering from continual exposure to seawater. If the blistering is extensive, then individual repair of each blister will be very tedious. For a hull with extensive blistering the usual remedy is to repair all the blisters, sand and fair the hull, and apply an entirely new top coat layer. At this point, applying a modern hull paint may be more workable than spraying on a new gel coat layer.
When a new Boston Whaler boat is molded, the gel coat layer is sprayed into a female contact mold. The mold surface has been prepared and will have an extremely smooth surface, and then a release agent (often polyvinyl alcohol) is sprayed onto the mold surface. The outer layer of gel coat that will be the outside of the hull is sprayed into the mold, and its resulting surface will be extremely smooth and will have minimal orange peel because it cures to a hard finish while in contact with the mold.
When spraying gel coat resin on the outer layer of a boat hull after it is out of the mold, there will be much more orange peel. To get the gel coat layer back to a smooth surface will require a great deal of careful sanding with progressively finer grit abrasives, starting perhaps at 400-grit and then in steps to 600, 800, 1000 or even 1200 grit. Between each step careful washing and removal of the previous abrasives is needed. Next polishing with first fast-cut and then slow-cut polishing compounds will follow. Then ultimately a coat of wax will be applied. This is very labor intensive and also consumes a lot of materials, so expect the cost of such refinishing to be expensive.
If there are only a few and isolated blisters, they individually can be repaired and blended back into the original hull gel coat with a suitably color-matched gel coat repair paste.
Hull gel coat blisters are typically a result of osmotic blistering from continual exposure to seawater. If the blistering is extensive, then individual repair of each blister will be very tedious. For a hull with extensive blistering the usual remedy is to repair all the blisters, sand and fair the hull, and apply an entirely new top coat layer. At this point, applying a modern hull paint may be more workable than spraying on a new gel coat layer.
When a new Boston Whaler boat is molded, the gel coat layer is sprayed into a female contact mold. The mold surface has been prepared and will have an extremely smooth surface, and then a release agent (often polyvinyl alcohol) is sprayed onto the mold surface. The outer layer of gel coat that will be the outside of the hull is sprayed into the mold, and its resulting surface will be extremely smooth and will have minimal orange peel because it cures to a hard finish while in contact with the mold.
When spraying gel coat resin on the outer layer of a boat hull after it is out of the mold, there will be much more orange peel. To get the gel coat layer back to a smooth surface will require a great deal of careful sanding with progressively finer grit abrasives, starting perhaps at 400-grit and then in steps to 600, 800, 1000 or even 1200 grit. Between each step careful washing and removal of the previous abrasives is needed. Next polishing with first fast-cut and then slow-cut polishing compounds will follow. Then ultimately a coat of wax will be applied. This is very labor intensive and also consumes a lot of materials, so expect the cost of such refinishing to be expensive.
If there are only a few and isolated blisters, they individually can be repaired and blended back into the original hull gel coat with a suitably color-matched gel coat repair paste.