1970 Newport Re Gel

[rdw]

Guys-
First of all this is not RDW this is his nephew. I'm a engineer who rebuilds a variety of things for fun and this is my new victim (second boat). I have never sailed but I hve been restoring this 1970 newport in Kentucky. After a ton of sanding and body work I completed re-gelcoating today. I tried several posted methods but I thought what I ended up with may help someone else.

Non-Skid
I mixed 4 oz of med grade silicon sand, from lowes paint store, 8 oz of microspheres and 16 oz of white gel coat. I placed this where I wanted it as a base coat before gelcoat spray. This was so the final gelcoat spray would blend and smooth it. It worked very well. Also i tried a textured roller, smooth foam roller, and a short nap smooth wall roller, all three inch. I found that a slow roll back and fourth motion with the short nap was the most uniform. Also it was better when I dipped it. Temp that day was 72 and humidity was around 45%.

Gelcoat
My mixture came down to this: 16 oz gelcoat, 1 oz MEK, 1/8 oz MEKP. Final coat I reduced the MEK to 3/4 and used 1/2 Ounce wax. Brand name of the gel was all Hi-Bond. I only had a few orange peal spots when I rushed or slipped. The gun I used was a $42 Lowes latex spray gun with the thick paint tip which came with it. I got the best results when I cleaned the gun twicw with acetone after each mix. If I could do it again I would have used one gun for half, then used a new for the rest. The gun was great. I also had the ES250 gelgun but it requires one huge air compressor. This requires 40-60 psi at 5-6 cfm I think. Temp was 80 and humidity was 40-45

Hope this helps someone out! I dont plan on sanding much at all. By the way, I tried a roller on a small section ....do not do it unless it is square and very small. That part I will be sanding.

[ironworker]

Thanks for the info. I am in Tennessee and am remodeling a '70 Newport 30 and am "on the fence" when it comes down to gel coating and just painting the topsides with something like Awlgrip. What was your experiences with prep work for the gel?

[rdw]

The prep work was a little rough. I used a belt sander on the old tread, which covered most of the boat. This did give me the opportunity to change the tread pattern to something more practical. Also I found that there were many spots with 1/2 of old gel or more which also showed cracks. Otherwise it was sand down, spray with black paint, fill and sand some more. One nice thing was that the gel follied alot of small spider cracks I did not see until spraying.