So after working on my boat off and on with not that much free time, I've finally finished all the fiberglassing and gotten the hulls down to shape and I'm ready to getlcoat. I went and picked some up from west marine, mixed it up according to the instructions, but when I started painting it on it went on real thin and it didn't work quite the way I expected. Then I lost the light so I had to stop for the day. It's sitting there now with saran wrap over it "to prevent tacky cure". Can/should I just paint another coat on top of it or is there somethign I need to do to prepare the surface first?
When you spray, you should do multiple coats at once. If the gel has set, you should likely sand lightly before going on. By the way... gelcoat needs to cure in a non-oxygen environment. The syran wrap will work, but it can wrinkle the surface. Find PVA ( sp? polyvinyl acetate ) This is a water based waxy coating sprayed on and then washed off later.
As I recall, spray coats with 20-30 second between. Spray thin coats rather than thick so they don't slump. Wait 5 minutes before the PVA.
actually i dont have a sprayer, i was brushing it on... is that bad? I figured if I got in on thick enough I could just sand away the brush strokes afterward. There are a couple of other boats in the boatyard that I know brushed on their gelcoat and they look pretty good.