I have a couple of small dings in the gelcoat above the water line that needs to be repaired. Should I use Marine Tex or is there something better to consider?
How deep are this dings? Are they through the gel coat into the glass mat?
Marine-tex is okay and will seal the areas, but is better suited to areas you aren’t going to see for cosmetic reasons.
The other option is the dings aren’t too deep is to use a gel coat paste that can be color matched using pigments.
The third option to make it look as good as possible is to fair the dings with a marine filler like Evercoat Formula 27 then use a Preval sprayer to spray thinned (with acetone) gel coat that has been color matched using the above mentioned pigments. Wet sand with 400-800-1000 and buff.
It all depends on how good you want it to look. Color matching isn’t all that difficult, it just takes patience and using small amounts of pigment to ease up to the right color. I start by dabbing the untinted gel coat onto the hull. As I add pigment I make a new dab of gel coat next to the one previous and so on. This allows you to see the progression of change and makes it easier to see the difference in color from the gel you are mixing compared to the hull.
Iain Pelto
Edgewater 185CC “Jumpin’ Bean II”
The one damaged are is small but you can see the glass mat. The other you can not. I’m in no hurry and if the marine filler isn’t too difficult, it sounds like that may be the best way to go.