Talk to any boat owner and you’ll know that repairing chips, nicks, gouges and scratches on fiberglass or in gelcoat can be tricky.

Here are some of the common challenges that people face and how to avoid them.

 

1. Poor Adhesion

Fiberglass repair resins are notorious for having hit-and-miss adhesion properties. That’s why a lot of repairs end up popping out, or repaired cracks end up widening.

 

2. Poor Flexibility

The other important factor is flexibility. A boat takes a beating when it hits waves so it needs to flex and so does the repair. Check for a product that has strong flexing properties so it absorbs stress and movement so the repair flexes as the boat flexes. It also helps stop cracks from widening.

 

3. The Wrong Repair Environment

No matter what type of repair method you’re using it’s important that the filler ‘cures’. What many people don’t realise is that the outside temperature plays a large role in curing time so if the temperature drops below 50°F / 10°C most products won’t cure so wait until the weather warms up. So – the cooler the weather the longer it will take to dry so if you’re repairing in winter, you can use a hairdryer to manually dry the repair for faster drying.

 

4. Mixing Color into the Resin

Some repairers are tempted to buy color-matched gelcoat and add it to the filler. The challenge with that is that as soon as you add color, you’re watering down the adhesion levels so if you add too much color you may find that the filler won’t stick to the surface. Better choose pre-colored fillers so there’s no need to manually add in gelcoat and risk watering down the adhesion. You can manually color match by blending the colored fillers together. There are pre-colored fillers available on Amazon.com

 

5. A Roughly Repaired Surface

One of the biggest telltale signs of an unprofessional repair is how smooth it is. The rougher the repaired surface is, the more visible the repair is. Some boat owners get a little obsessed about achieving a perfectly color-matched repair so they focus a lot of their effort on color matching. And while that’s useful, it isn’t as critical as people think.

The reality is, it’s the smoothness of the repair that will determine whether it’s visible to the eye – not so much the color. In fact, the color can be 2 – 3 shades different from the boat’s gelcoat color and appear invisible to the eye if the repair is perfectly smooth. If the repair isn’t smooth, even a perfectly color matched repair will stand out. It makes sense then to ensure you level the surface professionally