The Most Difficult Paint I Have Ever Corrected

[Dsholes78]

I just ordered a bottle of it! I have 6 molds to polish and 1 remaining plug. Four of the molds are gel coat and two are epoxy for high temp curing under vacuum so i will definitely be putting it to the test.

There is an old thread somewhere discussing abrasives and gelcoat & I dont know if you ever found the answer; but the reason lighter abrasives turn shiny gel coat dull is due to the nature of gel coat itself. Vinyl ester or polyester resin / gelcoat is not naturally shiny straight out of a spray gun or brush or whatever. Manufacturers add a gloss additive that is a styrene soluble wax. The wax is some copolymer containing other things that essentially fill the porous structure of the resin. So when you take, for instance, a swirl remover w/ an orbital polisher to otherwise "glossy" gel coat you are mainly abrading out the very thing making it glossy. Hence the need for heavy or large abrasives and fast rotary polishers to not only remove the stuff from the pores but also correct the paint. It is also the reason on oxidized gel coat that you can see some minor results with just about any polish. The chalkiness is typically the leftover binders & pigments which doesn't take much to remove from the surface.

You can read about some of the additives from an old patent # 2,595,911. Granted it's from 1952, but that is when fiberglass and resin technology first started taking off. For reference, Toray (the company) started making production carbon fiber filament in 1971.

I thought I knew how to buff paint untill I did my first Gelcoat Boat.
The typical tips and tricks I’ve got for cars, trucks, show cars etc went straight out the window. Straight to the wool on a rotary with heavy compound, for hours and hours.
Made a call to @Mike Phillips while contemplating my life choices / the reason I even exist and got it straightened out. Haha.
Whole different breed. Some day soon I will paint a show car or truck with gel coat just for the sake of correcting and perfecting it. In fact I think Mikes son or son in law did it, which is where I got the idea actually. A black Chevy if I remember correctly….

 

[JR107]

I thought I knew how to buff paint untill I did my first Gelcoat Boat.
The typical tips and tricks I’ve got for cars, trucks, show cars etc went straight out the window. Straight to the wool on a rotary with heavy compound, for hours and hours.
Made a call to @Mike Phillips while contemplating my life choices / the reason I even exist and got it straightened out. Haha.
Whole different breed. Some day soon I will paint a show car or truck with gel coat just for the sake of correcting and perfecting it. In fact I think Mikes son or son in law did it, which is where I got the idea actually. A black Chevy if I remember correctly….

They really are different - even spraying them. I use a GX4 HVLP from a company called The Gelcoater which has a tip size of 4.8mm. High build primer spray guns usually have tip size of 2.0-2.4mm. When spraying if you think its about to run, you still havent sprayed enough LOL.

If you really want to question the meaning of life: I'll send you a 2'x2' panel painted in the primer I showed in the first post. 50 mils of paint to play with.

 

[Setec Astronomy]

So I have been building an airplane the last couple of years

Sorry to post rather late but I've been away from the forum for a bit--it's hard to tell the scale from your pictures, is that a full-scale airplane or a model?

 

[Mike Phillips]

I thought I knew how to buff paint until I did my first Gelcoat Boat. The typical tips and tricks I’ve got for cars, trucks, show cars etc. went straight out the window. Straight to the wool on a rotary with heavy compound, for hours and hours.

Made a call to @Mike Phillips while contemplating my life choices / the reason I even exist and got it straightened out. Ha ha.

Whole different breed.

Agree - when salvaging deeply oxidized gelcoat boats or after sanding to remove deep oxidation - the rotary polisher with a full size, 8" 4-ply, twisted wool cutting pad is the way to get the job done in a time-efficient manner.

Some day soon I will paint a show car or truck with gel coat just for the sake of correcting and perfecting it.

In fact I think Mikes son or son in law did it, which is where I got the idea actually. A black Chevy if I remember correctly….

You are correct. My son-in-law, who is also a custom boat builder, painted this 1992 Chevy using


Here's a short video,

And here's a thread on this truck, including the exact paint he used to spray his truck.

Can you use a DA polisher to remove sanding scratches? - LIVE Online Detailing Class - Wednesday July 17th 2024

And for what it's worth, the truck still looks amazing!


Mike