My Restoration Process

[muddywater]

My restore on my 1972 20 Superfisherman has been progressing glacially for 6 years now so I thought I should post something before I forget all the details.

I have never done fiberglass work before so I decided to learn on the console. All the hardware was so far gone it had to be cut off with a cutting wheel. I cut 10 inches out of the center of the console and glassed it back together from both sides.

Having worked with WillyC on his gel-coat job, I decided to Gel-coat my console using gel-coat and Duratec (over epoxy for those of you who think it cannot be done). The Duratec makes it flow easily and you don't have to mess with PVA or wax. I think it flowed a little too well for the Gel-coat gun so I switched over to the $20 Harbor Freight gun which sprayed it ok but slowly. It tends to run pretty badly as you can see in the pic. Runs are hard to sand out without cutting completely through. After spraying it was sanded with 400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, sanding discs and then wet polished with Aquabuff 2000. The results are at least as good as factory if you spend the time. The only flaws I can see to the Duratec/Gel coat are all the sanding and the fact that the Duratec replaces some of the gel-coat (and therefore the pigment) so you have to have a pretty good build up or you can see through it. I think that was the reason WillyC decided to only use it on the bottom of his boat.

I guess I should note that although the company I got my epoxy from (Raka) sells a non-blushing epoxy, I used the normal low-blushing epoxy and made certain to wash any blush off with detergent and water. I guess using non-blushing epoxy would be the safer route.