Fiberglass 1 inc.
Cadet
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2022
- Messages
- 6
The reason that wet sanding is necessary is that gel coat, unlike paint. is somewhat porous. The oxidation is easily removed by wet sanding (the key word being WET!) but if only using compound you will just be pushing all that oxidation down into the pores. This results in a blotchy look in 6 to 8 months. We see this all the time, owners pay the "pros" to compound and wax but the boat looks like **** soon enough. So start with 800 grit and a hose (not a bucket) and do it by hand. gel coat is 22 to 24 mils thick (about 2 business cards) and the oxidizing has already used up a couple of those mils. Any machine sanding will quickly remove too much. Go back over it with 1200. Do a small area first. Follow with a polishing machine of choice and a heavy duty compound. Then again with a finer compound. Follow with whatever wax you like, it doesn't really matter because none of the waxes last very long anyway.
Don't even consider any of that floor polish or Poli-Blow crap. It'll peel and look terrible in a year and be VERY hard to remove
Don't even consider any of that floor polish or Poli-Blow crap. It'll peel and look terrible in a year and be VERY hard to remove
