Sacramento Boat Repair for gel coat and fiberglass boat repairs on all makes of boats.
Sacramento Boat Repair at Classic Craft has produced many boats over the decades and the owner has over 50 years of experience building and repairing fiberglass and gel coat on boats. If you’re looking for gelcoat color matching or gelcoat repair in Sacramento, trust the experts.
Production fiberglass boats are built outside in. That is gelcoat is sprayed against a polished and prepped mold. Then supporting layers of resin (polyester, vinyl ester, or epoxy) mixed with structural glass fiber reinforcements are applied over this to build the up desired thickness and strength. The boat hull is then removed from the mold with the resulting gelcoat as smooth and polished as the original mold surface.
Gel coat provides the color for a fiberglass boat and adds a UV barrier as well as weather resistance. Gelcoat is applied very thick as compared to paint products with thickness running from 20 to 40 mil. Compare this to most paints with a finish film thickness of 6 mil. Gel coat is a catalayzed anerobic curing product meaning that it will fully cure when sealed away from air, such as against a mold surface. When fully cured, gel coat acheives a very high surface hardness and water and chemical resistance.
Maintaining gelcoat is best done by keeping it clean and limiting sun exposure. Here at Sacramento Boat Repair /contact-us/ we recommend that boaters that trailer their boat carry a spray bottle with a mix of 1/4 cup of white vinegar and a few drops of liquid hand washing detergent. Immediately after taking your boat out of the water take few minutes and spray the boat hull down with this solution and then wipe off the boat hull with a clean towel. This solution will remove most of the water scum and dirt as well as most of the water spots that might develop.
Sacramento Boat Repair does recommend waxing gelcoat once a year. This should be done after thouroughly washing down the boat. An application of pure carnuba wax will help to fill the microscopic pinholes that natuarally occur in gelcoat and the wax will make it harder for dirt and waterspots to cling to the boat.
Bye the way, we often hear the term “It is just white” and we have to explain that there are about 1500 shades of white gelcoats. That said Sacramento Boat Repair does try to stock many of the more popular boats gelcoat colors.
Malibu White Gelcoat Damage
Bow Gelcoat Damage, Two Gelcoat Colors Matched
