Mel,
I'm confused because I am in the automotive paint business and I can assure you buffers are still used.

Sure there are shops still useing lacquer so let just say that if you are trying to remove oxidation from gelcoat try sanding with 1200 and 2000 grit wet dry paper and see the shine return.This method is fool proof in that the supper fine papers dont scratch, they infact pollish.

Where do you find those grits? Best I can find is 1000 grit at an auto store... I've got rubbing compound which I believe is 1500 grit.

I like that teflon boat polish to protect once I've got the oxidation off..

Jake, I'd still like to see a picture of a vertiglassed hull. My used prindle 19 hulls are just starting to show their age a bit and if this stuff works like you say, I'll be ordering some. Well just as soon as I actually get a storage space and off the waiting list and I can bring the boat down from my in-law's house

Hey Josh,
As I said earlier I bought the kit from the Marine Store and they have pictures in their testimonial section that I've given the link for below. Vertglas testimonial pictures

Greg

thanks greg, thats deffinately a good looking product, I'm all over it!

Jay,
Any automotive paint or fiberglass supply will have 2000 grit. However I assure you you do not want to sand your 20' boat with 2000. I've used 600 and then polished gelcoat with a buffer and trust me the 600 sanding scratches polish out. Leaving 2000 grit scratches on the hull will only lead to quicker dulling and discoloring. There's no doubt that a 2000 finish will have a shine and be smooth but its still not a polished or sealed surface.


Mel,
Lacquer paint is not legal anymore. It's been outlawed because of its VOC's. The only people that can get it are people that can prove that it's being used for restoration purposes. Were talking classic cars.

All cars are painted with urethane based paints. Most cars are two stage paint. The base coat is the color and dries to a semi gloss finish. The clearcoat is sprayed over that for durability and shine. A friend of mine has a body shop. I can assure you that every car he paints gets wet sanded and buffed. He uses 1000 grit then a aggressive compound then a foam pad with glazing compound.

I do touch-up paint repair for high end car dealers. I use 2000 to remove very fine scratches that are in the clearcoat. Then those are polished with a foam pad. If you want to test your theory that 2000 polishes try it on your car and let me know what happens.

I really don't see the need to use 2000 for any other reason.

So, you still want to wet sand with these grits?, then I would do it this way, Go to Wally Mart and buy a jitter bug air sander. Find a capable air source and put your thousands grit paper on that. That way you can run water and let the machine do the work.

It does what they say and those pictures are real. In the kit, they supply you with a "white" 3m scotch brite pad (the color indicates the abrasive grade of the pad) for removing the loose oxidation in combination with a rubbing compound. This still requires a bit of elbow grease. I recommend using a buffer (a real one) with the supplied rubbing compound and just quickly go over the gel coat for much faster and easier preparation. Then wash the boat, dry it, and start putting on the coating. DO NOT go over the vertglas with the buffer (it quickly turns black) and don't get acetone on the vertglas unless you intend to remove it.

Daniel,
A few points,


This product sounds good but I would be interested to see how it holds up to repeated washings, sliding over the decks on and off the wire etc. Has anyone used it on their cat yet?



I believe I suggested he try sanding and polishing first.



I don't understand this at all. We use sand paper to prep the hull before painting. It removes the oxidized stuff and gives us some tooth for the paint or Gelcoat to adhere to. Yes some paints are better. I painted my old boat in 1989 with Imron. Four years later I polished it and it hardly made the boat look any better. It has the same paint job on today and the guy that owns it hasn't done anything to it at all. I walked over to recently with a little wax a rubbed a spot and it shined right up.

What do you consider a short time?

Wyatt, What did you paint your boat with? Imron does not chip off as long as the most basic prep work is done.

Most large yachts I've seen are painted not gelcoated. Some of the Tornado's of the top teams have paint jobs on them. My Hobie had areas where the gelcoat was 3/16 thick. Paint can be a few mils thick. Lighter.

Looking at the cost factor 1989-2005 at $70 per year. You can buy a nice paint job for that. By the way it cost me a couple hundred bucks to get the paint done. The 303 may work but where does all that stuff wear off to? The water? I have a 20' boat it's going to take more than a bottle and more than ten minutes.



Now understand, my current boat is all Gelcoat and I don't have any plans to paint it. However finding Gel that matches is not easy. I had to have some custom mixed so I can do repairs that come close. With paint it's easy to do spot repairs that match perfectly.





Another way of looking at this is some of us use our boats. Your quite a ways up there. Your sailing season is how long?
I sail from March into December. My boat goes in on Friday and comes out on Sunday and thats almost every weekend.I actually use my boat to have fun and sometimes race. It's not uncommon for me to sail 150 miles in a weekend. That means going places and pulling up on beaches. It's unavoidable and silly not to enjoy this area when all it costs is a few hours twice a year touching up the bottom.

Bottom line is you make these decisions after carefully looking at your indivdual needs and weighing all the options and no matter what you decide to do, do it right.

Enjoy.

Catman,

Before I respond to your thoughts, I want to go back to the beginning of the thread. Greg wanted to know what caused the oxidation damage to his hulls. It's caused by a particular spectrum of sun light, ultraviolet. Sounds like he tried to repair the damage and he was dissapointed his effort to do so didn't last.

We're all so busy in life that every time we are confronted with a new experience, who has time to investigate everything and why reinvent the wheel. Somedody tells us how they tackled the issue and we follow their advice; after all we were the one without any relevant experience. But there's practical problem with giving advice. You can't say, just do what I tell you, cause they're a lot of us who might resent a sailor standing in for god. So I figure, to each their own, and am inclined to keep my mouth shut. But if you could sneak inside my skull you might hear, jeez I wonder why that guy insists on paddling upstream.

Hull damaged, above the waterline, doesn't appreciably alter a boats sailing efficfiency. So it seems to me when hull oxidation bothers us it must have to do with damaging the boat's visual appeal. For my part I like shiny stuff. Also, personally I hate spending hours of hard rubbing; it's just more work than I want to do. I'd rather putter around less strenuously than end up feeling like my hands and shoulders are about to fall off.

1500,2000 will remove most oxidation you must seal the surface after with polymer sealer or restorer. Good luck sorry we got off topic.If you turn off you computer and start working your boat you can go sailing this weekend.

Hey Mike,

Sorry I couldn't finish answering your points, something came up.

From the various comments, I gather some of the guys would rather sand and wax. I respect a guys' right to do things as he sees fit. But I would have to say I disagree on several points with some of the methods discussed here; not as a matter of choice, but rather because I think they're either incorrect or ineffective. I've been puttering around with boats for about fifty years now. And as Greg noted I'm an autodidact so I'm pretty interested in learning. Boy you asked a lot of questions. This is gonna take me longer than polishing my hulls. For what it's worth this is what I've learned about caring for plastics exposed to the sun. I hope the following will answer you questions.

1.) I've used 303 Protectant on many watercraft, for many years. Properly applied, it seeps into the hull depending upon the porosity of the gel coat. The surface film will wear off with use (water, wind, skin, anything that rubs against it) over time. That's why I reapply it every so often, throughout the season.
2.) Similarly, Vertglass too is absorbed into the gel coat, depenent upon porosity and it's remaining residue will also similarly wear off.
3.) My understanding of the two, from a chemist's perspective is, 303 possesses superior anti-oxidant blocking agents. Both are applied the way. 303 is also quite a bit cheaper.
4.)The effectiveness of both is contingent upon proper surface preparation.
5.) Depending on the number of coats, they both create a "slippery" effect on the hulls. The first couple of sailings after the original application of 303, when I trapped-out, my feet felt like they were resting on ball bearings. I had almost zero traction. So now I coat the hull side where my feet rest when trapped-out, with a thinner coating and rub it in well, removing all the excess. I've only used Vertglass on canoes, kayaks, and runabouts so I don't have personal experience with how exactly how slippery it is underfoot.
6.) For the purposes we are talking about, that is, "esthetics" and nothing else, I would never sand the gel coat of my hulls. I don't care what grit is used. Period. The sun is already actively destroying my gel coat, I don't want to assist it in that regard. If it's just about shiny hulls, don't buy sandpaper and DON'T SAND YOUR HULLS. I'll get to abrasives in a minute.
7.) PREVENTATIVE MAINTENANCE. (I can't use the quote tool, to reference your particular question, so bear with me.) Maybe some confusion on this thread is coming from not separating two distinct topics: ongoing hull maintenance and hull restoration work. For example, I've got a 2005 F17, so practically speaking I don't have hull oxidation (yet). To prevent oxidation I do preventative maintenance at the beginning of the season by applying 303 with a saturated rag and wipe down hulls, spar, boom, beams, stainless metal, blocks, rudders, dagger boards tiller bar & stick, and coated shroud lines and forestay. I also coat the hulls once every couple weeks or so when I'm done sailing for the day. I just wipe the hulls down (I don't crawl under the tramp) with a rag damp with 303, not dripping wet, and kind of just polish the 303 into the boat. Maybe takes me ten minutes. Prior to launching this spring I flipped the boat and gave the bottom of the hulls a real thorough rub down and have repeated that once this summer. I'll do it again this fall when I put it to bed, so it will be ready for next spring. The only reason I do the bottoms is to prevent (or maybe I should say, lessen) stains, dirt, and crud from attaching to the hull bottoms.
8.) RESTORATION. I also bought five older cats this spring. The hulls were in varying conditions of deterioration. So in this example I had a lot of work ahead of me. To loosen and remove the oxidant I used a fine grit rubbing compound. I don't use sand paper for this because a.)the slurry doesn't "plug up" like it does with sandpaper; b.)I can get very fine abrasive compounds in an emulsion that floats then over convex surfaces far better than fixed sandpaper; and c.)controling the amount of pressure needed, especially on undulating surfaces, can be done more effectively through the sensitivity of one's hands in a way that is far superior to the work produced by a scrub pad mounted on a buffing machine. Commercial operations almost always use buffers when applying abrasives and some of these guys are really proficient. But you and I, saiors undertake this once, twice, maybe three times in our lifetime. You think we get proficient? The only thing we get good at is cutting off half the remaining gel coat the sun didn't get to yet. From experience a softer touch will control the removal of the oxidant from the still solid gel coat. The goal is to removed the damage, not the remaining gel coat. Take an old thin rag, ten or twelve inches square, fold it over until your hand pretty well covers most of it, pour the coumpound on the rag until it can't hold any more, and start rubbing in circles. Keep adding coumpound to maintain a slury on your work. The rag helps hold more slurry than your hand, but it's your fingers that keep telling you to push harder or lighten up. Remember all you want to do is to remove the broken down crud. And you can't see it because it requires magnification. Figure you'll do it only once to your boat so spend a saturday morning and do it right and be done with it forever. I can't tell you verbally how much effort to apply and when to stop. I could only show you. the condition of your hulls dictate that. If you insist on a buffer, all I can say is go easy. They can really make the compound cut fast. Remember with a machine or by hand, the stuff is going to dry on your hulls as you move on to unworked areas and must not only be removed, but the liquid antioxidant must also be applied before you know whether you removed enough material or too much. In order to make an oxidized hull surface shine, it must be abraded. The surface worked with an abrasive compound and cut off all deris, the high points, and irregularities. But it's a double edged sword; we're make fresh scratches on the hulls order to remove existing ones. By using a very fine grit in a slurry, we make microscopically finer cuts as we work the surface, thereby removing the oxidized mat, large cuts and scratches. Upon finishing, thoroughly wash off with soapy water and rinse. Then the surface will be properly prepared for "finishing". Hull color is in the gel coat, if over aggressive sanding didn't remove it. At this point apply the product of your choice and seal the surface well by patiently rubbing it in. Additional coats of either continue to fill the microscopic depressions until the Nth coat leaves a uniform surface and produces a deep glossy appearance. Guys who like shiny now uncap a cool one and sit back and smile contentedly at their own reflection.
9.) Your own experience with your old boat is a great example illustrating what I've tried to say. Polishing an old paint job (fully oxidized by the sun) or nicely oxidized gel coat hulls doesn't work!!!!!!!! Unless your willing to do the correct restoration required in preparation for the finish coat, you'll get, as you said, unimpressive results. You polished a four year old paint job with wax and as you say, ..."and it hardly made the boat look any better". This was because you didn't remove the crud and get down to fresh gel coat. Coming back to the boat months or years later, you dabbed at a spot with some wax and it shined right up. But like Greg's original observation in this thread, wax doesn't last but a couple weeks at best. Why? Because UV breaks wax down faster than greased lightening. Wax isn't particularly easy to apply, and for sure it's time consuming, so why go through the effort for something that doesn't work.
10.) Mike, assuming we're talking about maintenance and not restoration, your twenty foot boat is only two feet seven inches longer than my F17. Ok, maybe it will take you fifteen minutes instead of ten for an occassional hull rubdown.
11.) Unless you have a serious crack that's leaks or threatens structural integrity, or a very deep scratch, you don't ever putz around with the gel coat. Otherwise there won't be any color matching left to do.
12.) No Mike, I disagree with another way to look at our boats is, as you say, by looking at the part of the country we reside in or how much we use our boats. The level of care a guy gives to his boat is his determination alone. So the choice of boat maintenance is yours. As is the amount of time you use the boat. You made an assumption that because I live far north of you I don't sail much. That's not relevant at all. If it was your point wouldn't fly because what you don't know is I've sailed a heck of a lot more than you this year. At least according to how often you said sailed on the weekends; which incidently sounds like a lot of fun to me. I know you weren't aware I took the summer off to sail as a means of doing a more enjoyable physical therapy for some injuries I sustained. My intention was not to say how you should use your boat. Rather I was trying to make a point about me and how I take care of my boat, relative to how I use it. If I lived where you live, I'd go with you, and pull up on the same beaches right along side of you. Hull bottoms are'nt damaged by UV. I'd still coat the bottom of my hulls really well, because it would give them some marginal protection they otherwise wouldn't have. That's all. I agree with your closing sentence: it's the operative idea for a prudent sailor.

I'll be done sailing up here sometime in November. If the hurricanes are gone by then, maybe I'll come down and explore your waters. Though I confess I'm a tad touchy about sailing with sharks. Hope I addressed your points.

Happy sailing
Daniel

Not True. I applied Vertglas to the non-skid on the deck of my monohull with no ill effects. The non-skid was not quite as grippy to bare feet as before but with proper deck shoes it was actually grippier. Vertglas is not an oil or anything like it. It's a hard coating that is more like paint than wax (but somewhere between the two) but it is thin enough to really get into the pores of the gel coat during application before it fully hardens.

Dan,
I'd love to respond but I'm going sailing!

It'll give me time to eat MY spinach and adjust my Halo.

LOL

Jake,

I know what Vertglas is. I've got several gallons of it in my shop. Seems to me Jake, you put yourself in a bit of a duplicitous position when you tell me my comment is not true and then go on to say when sailing barefoot it's not quite as grippy as prior to applying the Vertglas; but that can be remedied by wearing good deck shoes. I didn't realize at the time that less grippy was a more acceptable description than slippery. That Jake is a distinction without significance. You say you applied the stuff over nonskid material on a mono hull. Most mono hulls put non skid on horizontal surfaces. A little less grippy on a horizontal surface, may be compounded when applied to a vertical surface. It sounds like you're disagreeing with me, though you haven't run a meaningful test.

I'm ignorant of some aspects of both of these products. Such as performance factors that extend beyond my own personal experience with them. I'd rather not make any claims beyond what I know. I was attempting to describe all the issues I could think of, so that the serious guys who had never used either product, wouldn't be hit with unforeseen surprises.

As I said in my earlier post, I've never used Vertglas on a cat. So personally I don't know what effect it may have, if any, on trapping out. You seem to be supporting the observations I've made on other boats, regarding increased initial slipperiness. Meaning the possibility that Vertglas may have an effect on trapping out by potentially making the hulls "less grippy," at least to barefoot sailors, especially without benefit of nonskid underfoot. When the first guy who actually puts this stuff on the sides of his hulls and sails on a "Verted" cat and comes back to this thread and tells us what happened, then we'll have something to go on. Until then it's conjecture.

At least as of now anybody who wishes to use the stuff will be better prepared. Because heaven forbid, had somebody applied Vertglas to their hulls and set sail on a gusty day, they well may have found themselves suddenly flying around the forestay, and as we all know there is simply no excuse for that kind of sailing mishap. So together we've made the world a safer place.

You know Jake I may be wrong, but I thought Greg Hill started this thread because he was interested in improving the "looks" of his hulls. Don't you think your disagreement over an interpretation of the quantitative intent of the word slippery vs less grippy just obscures the more important issue of UV hull damage and the potential value restoration products may offer some sailors?

Daniel

Mike,

Get crankin, Rita's comming. I'm just back, been out all day, blowing around 12, nice and steady. Don't forget to double dip the spinach. Gotta be big and strong to wear a halo.

Daniel

This may be a tangent from the topic, but while all you experts are here.....does anybody know what product would be best to put on the rotomolded plastic boats like the Wave and the Getaway to make them shiny and to repel road tar and generally make them easier to wash. Oxidation does not seem to be a problem with the material used for these boats; and sanding is not an option.

Would products like Vertglas or 303 work on plastic, even though there aren't any pores to seal? Rick says wax might work, but the boat would be slower.

Anybody have any ideas? I want my Wave to be shiny! Or at least clean.

Easy there Popeye - I didn't mean to offend you. I always wear shoes when sailing, hence, my comment that Vertglas does not create a slippery surface.

All I know is..... today I Vertglassed my hulls using the 3 step process the kit recommended and OH MY GOSH.... What a difference. 10 minutes after putting everything away my neighbor came over to borrow a saw and when he saw the boat he said, " You buy another boat? That thing is gorgeous..."
THANKS JAKE for putting me onto this stuff. I don't care what Popeye says about you.....
I'll take some "after" photos tomorrow and post them.
I hope now it lasts like they said it does.... You think it would work on the mast too?
Greg

Mary,



Either of these two products should work for you. We started building fiberglass whitewater canoes and kayaks in the mid 1950s. The boats were stored outside and after the first season we noticed they all had faded from sun exposure. It got progressively worse when we moved to Colorado because we then spent the summers running rivers at high altitude so by seasons end all the boats had faded even more, and worse the bottoms received a brutal beating from paddling thru younger boulder fields. A general way to think of the various agents that give fiberglass or carbon fiber their stiffness is to consider them all plastics and to include rotomoulded products in that category also. Because there are many different methods used it's risky to say definitively that something will always work. So with that in mind, we never manufactured using roto moulding because of the added weight and expensive tooling. But we did apply both Verglas and 303 to the rotomoulded boats of those who enrolled in our seminars. If I was you I'd order a small amount and try it. Using either of these (or several others similar to them) will give you additional benfits that no one has yet mentioned. First, our seminar clients were mostly serious whitewater competitors and they wanted to produce more speed for the same amount of energy expended. If you prepare your hull bottoms thoroughly, as I've suggested earlier in this thread, and apply these types of products, your hulls will slice thru the water more efficiently than without it.

JAKE----Serious racers like yourself may want to consider doing what I said I did to my boat-flip it over and coat the bottoms. And coat your rudders and the exposed part of your dagger boards also. After several summers of testing we used 303 on hull bottoms for competitive events, because it gave us faster boats. That's not a knock on other products. It's a reality that sailors will have a harder time flipping their boat than a kayaker, so they might elect another option as more feasible. Jake I did not take offense. I'm particualr on being told something is for certain, when the example offered in support falls short. I listened to what you said and I would still make the same point; it seems reasonable that a nonskid horizontal surface may produce a different response than a vertical smooth surface. I've put Vertglas it on plenty of boats, but I never stood on a vertical surface with Vertglas on it, and therefore I can't make a definitive statement. I can say, boat decks have always, for lack of a better word, felt somewhat more slippery after being coated than prior to coating. For my part I don't know what the response will be, because I have not yet put Vertglas on my hulls and trapped out on them on a windy day. My reply to you was you haven't sailed on Verted hulls either. I did caution folks as to my experience with 303. You may have other info you haven't mentioned, but with what we've said, does my reasoning at least make sense to you?
MIKE----For saliors like youself who find themselves hauling their boats up on beaches without cat trax, another attribute of these products is, to some degree they help prevent scratching the hull bottoms. It is highly unlikely that the gel coat on any boat is uniform in thickness and the bottoms may have areas that are thinner than desired. Sliding over sand on a regular basis will wear the already thin gel coat thinner. For this purpose Vertglas was better for protecting our hulls. When ran heavy boulder gardens on expeditionary streams in South America we didn't care about speed and "painted" our hulls heavily with Vertglass type products.
GREG----Earlier I mentioned the various parts of the boat I cover with these type products. For me the most important unit on my boat is my carbon mast because it's the most expense. I gather from listening to this forum, most sailors probably won't consider dealing with drag as very important. Nonetheless reducing water drag is a big factor in going fast. However there is plenty of drag aloft also. Even a lonely forestay creates a know amount of drag. Larger objects create a lot more. If it was my boat, I'd coat the mast.
MARY----Another effect of this stuff is that it really does a good job of protecting your boat from dirt and grim. This is because it helps to seal the surface, denying particles a foothold, so to speak. So If I were you and I was going to haul my boat up north for the summer I'd coat the boat before I left. You may arrive at you're destination with road grim on your boat but it will hose off much more readily. Ric is correct regarding wax. I've already commented on the failures of wax. To summarize: wax is hydrophillic, when instead hydrophobic characteristics are far more desirable. This means wax attracts water, hangs onto; with the net effect that it increases drag on the boat. The products we are discussing repel water in varying degress, and in so doing they reduce drag. The other point to make is, wax breaks down very, very rapidly when exposed to two elements in particular, sun and water. Minnesota has long been involved in composite research and here they always seem to be tinkering with their formulas. I don't know how porous Hobie boats are, but as I said we've used several different formulas on roto moulded boats because it improved performance, by protecting the bottoms from excessive scratching. If it was my boat I'd certainly give it a try.

Longevity. Greg, I'm assuming because you were dissapointed with your ealrier attempt that you followed the directions for Vertglas to a T. If you've put your boat to bed for the winter and cover it with a tarp or store it inside you'll make it through to next fall just fine.

I do want to remind everyone that this stuff is a very good product for the reasons I given above, but it will not stay on indefinitely. That's dependent upon the amount of exposure to sunlight, water friction moving over the hulls, and how much the hulls are hauled over the ground. I've been sailing five or six days a week so I don't expect my hulls to stay covered indefinitely. That's why I mentioned that every couple weeks I give the hulls a quick ten minute rubdown.

I'm not suggesting other people follow my routine, or that I have a favorite product. I'm merely trying to enlarge your level of awarness so you can make better decisions based upon your own circumstances.

Hope this helps.
Daniel