Best prodcuts for gelcoat boats

[Ballistic]

I have a friend who owns a few boat dealerships, and they get sent their brand new wakeboard boats down with swirls and stuff in the gelcoat and hes wanting to be able to just get most of them out in a single step, I was looking at the Marine 31 stuff and also thought what about the Rupes UHS or Wolf gang swirl remover.

And what are some of the best pads to use on gel coat?

[allenk4]

Walk their boat lot with him and ask him to point out a boat that looks like he wants these to look like

Wool Pad/Rotary is generally suggested for any significant correction of defects in Gel Coat.

Double check to make sure it is indeed gel coat. Some are painted.

Watch out for the stickers, they can be damaged easily.

[Ebg18t]

IMHO it is more about technique when working with gelcoat. I have had good luck with fairly aggressive pads (lake or uber yellow & orange) with Flex 3401. I have been using the Garry Dean Gelcoat polish & compound. The Marine 31 products look good. I doubt you could go wrong with them.

As allenk4 mentioned watch out for the decals. They can be tricky.

[98LowRanger]

Glad to hear someone has had good results using a Flex 3401. A buddy of mine wants me to detail and do some polishing on the gel coat of his boat. I was worried that my Flex wouldn't be able to cut it because I ALWAYS hear of only rotary buffers being used on gel coat boats. I couldn't see why the Flex wouldn't get good results from an aggressive setup of a microfiber cutting pad and M101 or FG400. Sure, it will probably take a little longer then a rotary. Ebg18t, what compound/polish did you use on gel coat finishes with your Flex?

[Ballistic]

I plan to use my Rupes LHR 21ES, i probably should order some more microfiber pads for it and i wanted to try the UHS system with it already got a bottle of it from sema just need to get a pad for it..

Then again i need to see when they get a fresh boat in and see if its as bad as they say, shocking enough they have been selling a lot of surf boats in the winter..

[Ebg18t]

Glad to hear someone has had good results using a Flex 3401. A buddy of mine wants me to detail and do some polishing on the gel coat of his boat. I was worried that my Flex wouldn't be able to cut it because I ALWAYS hear of only rotary buffers being used on gel coat boats. I couldn't see why the Flex wouldn't get good results from an aggressive setup of a microfiber cutting pad and M101 or FG400. Sure, it will probably take a little longer then a rotary. Ebg18t, what compound/polish did you use on gel coat finishes with your Flex?

I have the Garry Dean Gel Coat Compound & the AIO. He does recommend the rotary with the compound, but I only have the Flex. The Flex with yellow uber pad did good. Probably took longer but I got the results I was after. The AIO actually does pretty good on its own with oxidation and lighter swirls, so depending on his bad that gel coat is you might be able to use a AIO. The working times on these two products was decent.

I have FG400 but never tried it on the gelcoat. I usually just cut/polish the gelcoat, wipe a sealant on then take care of the interior. Just be careful of the stickers. I might look into using a coating next time do my boat. But I need to figure out how much I would need since there is a lot of surface area.