How is this done?

[mogfisher]

On my boat and many others, the hull is multiple colors. How do they get the stripes and graphic look while spraying this into a mold? There must be clear gel over the whole thing, right? Its perfectly smooth between colors. I cannot feel a noticable transition from 1 color to the next. I want to re gel my hull while the cap is off because I figure I can flip it easy enough and that would make it much easier. I don't really want to make it all 1 color though. Do people just use paint and then a clear gel over it all? What's the process? Thanks! Heres a pic of my boat.

 

[ondarvr]

Re: How is this done?

There is no ridge at the edge of each color when you do it in the mold.

The clear only covers the metal flake portions.

Its not easy to re-gel coat with the same graphics and not have small ridges between colors, it can be done though.

On light solid colors (white, light yellow, etc) the clear will yellow and be noticeable, so its not normally used on them. Dark and/or metalics tend to hide the yellowing better, so its not noticed as easily.

 

[mogfisher]

Re: How is this done?

So what do they do? Lay it down in multiple steps? Tape off sections? I'm just having a hard time figuring out how they do it. I'm wondering if I should even bother with a re gel. Its an old boat anyway. A couple scratches give it character. It does have a ton of hairline cracks here and there though so that's why I was thinking about a re gel. Most of them are from an impact that flexed the hull at one point. Not huge but made a spider web pattern in the gel. The rest is mostly chips probably from scraping rocks or boat loading. I'm torn between a complete re gel or just marine tex the problem areas and go fishing in my old boat.

 

[ondarvr]

Re: How is this done?

They tape it all off first and for the most part its all free hand, all those patterns are very difficult to do. They spray a color (clear first) then pull tape and spray another, this is repeated until its done. You can shut a bass boat company down buy hiring the tapers away from them.

To fix spider cracks can be a real hassle, each one needs to be sanded out and filled, sometimes with glass, but at a minimun a very strong filler. You also need to find out the reason for each one. Was it from a one time impact, was it flexing from lack of support or a poor design, was the gel coat too thick, the laminate too thin, etc. If you don't fix the issue that caused them, they will return fairly soon.