Continued...
Day 3 - Sunday Morning - Extreme Gelcoat Correction
Here's our training boat, this is an extremely neglected 24' Sea Hunt Center Console. This is in my opinion, the BEST type of boat for training purposes. First, the gelcoat is VISIBLY oxidized and filled with dock rash. This is DEEP oxidation. Not only can the human eyes see the accurate condition, but a hull in this neglected state can also be captured with both photos and video. This is just one reason I don't bring in oxidized WHITE gelcoat boats. It's too difficult for the students to easily see the before and after difference and it's a lot more difficult to capture before and after with photos and video.
Besides that, a boat with large hull sides makes for a more comfortable working experience since all the steps we're going to go over mean standing on your feet and working on a surface directly across from you. I've seen other boat classes use Flats boats and Bass boats and the students are all hunched over trying to train on a narrow hull side and it's simply no fun to train on these types of boats. So, if you're interested in learning the art of gelcoat transformation,
get signed up for my next boat detailing class.
Here you can see someone else has already performed a couple of Test Spots. Whatever they did, the results looked pretty good. I'm not sure why they didn't tackle this project? For our part, we'll have to fix the entire hull and make sure there's no ghosting left by these two sections, which simply means we will re-sand and buff these areas.
After moving the boat inside, I took a couple more pictures using a Swirl Finder Light to show that not only is the gelcoat hull deeply oxidized, but the last person that buffed out this boat using NOTHING but a rotary polisher and thus left holograms throughout the entire finish.
It's Go Time!
It's probably around 9:00am in the morning. Class started t 8:30am and it likely took about a half hour for me to demonstrate how to do a Gelcoat Test Spot to dial-in and prove our process and then turn the class loose with the first step - machine wet sanding using 8mm gear-driven orbital polishers.
I don't have a lot of pictures of this process but here's are the steps the class used to go from neglected to respected.
- Machine wet sand - 1000 grit Mirka Abralon
- Machine wet sand - 2000 grit Mirka Abralon
- Machine wet sanding - 3000 grit Mirka Abralon
- NSP 150 with wool pads on rotary polishers
- NSP 150 with foam cutting pads on FLEX 8mm gear-driven orbital polishes
- Install 3 applications of the Dr. Beasley's Boat Coat Pro
Here's the after results!
It was raining outside and the 1961 Plymouth Fury Police Car won't be leaving for a couple of days, so we squeezed her in off to the side of the boat to keep her clean and shiny.
Awesome work class - this is a MIRROR FINISH on gelcoat!
Same Mirror Finish on the Starboard side!
Self-Portrait
And here's the tired, but trained class that detailed 6 cars and this 24' Sea Hunt Center Console boat of the course of 3 days!
And a huge thank you to Yancy for all his amazing photography work as well as assisting me with the training for this class.
Mike
