fibreglass restoration or 2pac paint

[610]

I am currently doing up a cruise craft reefranger 5.5m half cab fibreglass boat. I would like to know the thought of any people in the know about the pros and cons of 2paccing the whole boat as opposed to patching and reviving the gelcoat. does anyone know roughly how much the 2 pac would cost and the name of someone that you would recommend in the brisbane/goldcoast area. thanks in advance for any ideas

[dreemon]

Hya, Just sprayed my nautiglass in 2pac, rolled and brushed the bottom first,

I was thinking gel coat but It was something I wasn't familiar with, did some searches, and just went with the 2pac, did it myself and had some dramas:-X
big learning curve but in the end . . . only a few days ago it came up looking Really Good ;D, did a charchol grey stripe and sprayed the engine grey today,

as for who to do it in paint, I would think one outa 3 panel beater shops should be able to do it, as long as their booth is big enough, I spent about $ 300-350 in materials, but all the labour was done by me, so saved money in a way, but heaps of hr's , someone here would'ave had there boat done one way or anouther and give you a rough price,

I almost bought a cruise craft but someone beat me to it , Cheers

[BM]

There are those who declare gelcoat is the only way to go for a boat resto and there are those who say go 2K.

I am in the 2K camp and have restored many boats (including a Bertram 20 currently thats nearly complete) and have done them all in 2K.

Probably 99% of repairers you speak to will say they do major repairs in 2K and minor repairs in gelcoat. I agree with this position. Very few repairers will recommend a complete repaint using gelcoat. It is incredibly labourious and its questionable as to how superior the gelcoat finish is.

Member TJBear on here is likely to pop along and advise that recoating a boat is do-able in either method but logically is done in 2K to keep the cost from being prohibitive. TJ works for a major manufacturer who use 2K on million dollar boats.

Theres another member on here who swears by only using gelcoat and says 2K is for people who are incapable.

One issue that can arise here is that the original gelcoat can be quite thin in areas and if in the resto process you sand the gelcoat too far you would get the imprint of the glass beneath and then you would need to start trying to colour match the gelcoat to patch the area that you went too far in. Sure, it can be done but colour matching 25yr old gelcoat and getting it perfect can be very difficult.

I can't assist with who to take it to as I am in Vic but are you capable of undertaking the task yourself? 2K is quite easy to use and unless you do all the prep work yourself and just have a painter paint it for you, you will be up for big dollars to have someone prep and paint it.

The problem is that it needs to be done in stages and you generally won't get it into a booth (unless you aren't painting the bottom and can get it in the booth on its trailer).

Painting in open air (say inside a factory) is the best bet and you remove the boat from the trailer and onto some timber frames. I support the hull with fenders under one side (across the timber frames) and roll the boat onto the fenders for sanding, filling etc.

When its time to paint, mask from the chine line up and you paint from keel to chine on one side, tilt the boat over and use precut timber pieces (say 5ft long) that sit on the ground and rest under the gunwale protrusion to hold it up as you can no longer use fenders as they would foul the area you just painted.

When it dries, chock the boat on both sides and mask above the gunwale and below the chine and spray the sides. When that dries mask below the gunwale and secure the boat well and then paint the difficult part, the deck. Start inside the boat and make your way out of the boat. First coat is easy, 2nd gets a bit more difficult!!

An alternative method is to roll the boat off onto some tyres. Then using blokes or hand winches roll the boat onto a gunwale (supported by tyres or fenders or similar) and then you can sand a prep the bottom (from chine to chine). Paint it and let it cure then roll it back over and put it back on the trailer. Then you proceed as before.

cheers

[Noelm]

when I was at the boat show recently I had a look at some sort of "miracle" roll/brush on 2 pack, the guy said (probably lied) that is was done by people who had never used the product before, they had an old boat literaly half done, one side was done, the other was left as is, if it was half as good as the finished product I saw, it would be great. Can't remember the name of the stuff, I was just sort of walking by and the guy yanked me in to give me a run down on it, I must have looked like a sucker or something!

[Tracker]

when I was at the boat show recently I had a look at some sort of "miracle" roll/brush on 2 pack, the guy said (probably lied) that is was done by people who had never used the product before, they had an old boat literaly half done, one side was done, the other was left as is, if it was half as good as the finished product I saw, it would be great. Can't remember the name of the stuff, I was just sort of walking by and the guy yanked me in to give me a run down on it, I must have looked like a sucker or something!

Just guessing but prob Sterling paint.(If the sample was the bow of a boat)

I've used sterling 2 pac a few times and it is great stuff and comes out tops,but Its a bit hard to buy around Brissie.
Maybe google.
Like all 2 pac prep is important,the sterling I sprayed on(lazy) but have done minor jobs with brush and a top finish is doable.:)

[Swindells]

If it were my boat i'd strip all of the existing paint back to the gelcoat and give 2 good coats of epoxy resin to water proof the hull because if there are any cracks through the gel coat to the polyester resin/glass you could start osmosis. polyester resins are bad for moisture ingress whereas epoxy is fully waterproof. then paint with a 2-pack or Boatcraft Pacific in loganholme has a crosslinked water based marine paint called Aquacote.

Gelcoats are hard to get right, they are generally only used in the female molding process of these manufactured boats... you can just use a fairing compound powder with epoxy or polyester to fix gelcoat issues.

Cheers

Swindells

[dreemon]

On the bottom of mine, ( hard to spray on any boat) I used a moehair lill med roller, rolled the boat off the marks the rollers usually sit and painted those areas first 2 coats , then the next day rolled it foward to get the feild area,

I used northane or norglass 2k, with the roller alone I was getting an acceptable finish :D so only pained up to where I could get the more visible area and sprayed fr. that point an onwards, even if you get right under it still looks really good,


if you were to brush and "Tip" you'll need to be pretty good with a brush and need about an $ 80 brush to get a great finish and that brush would need to be dipped in brushing thinners at times to help the paint fr dragging,

if you were to go that path, I recon you could go to the pub , look for a few blokes wearing house painting whites and get one of them to do it,

for a box or 2 ;D