Vacuum Pump Repair

If you need to make a hull repair, here are a few helpful tips. Firstly, start with gel coat cracks and scratches. The most common problems with fiberglass boats are the gel coat cracks also known as crazings. You can easily recognize them because they can appear as a single line, a series of parallel lines, or a spider web with its origin in the middle of an impact. Usually, crazings are caused by an impact or stress with just enough force to crack the overcoat, but not enough to also damage the glass beneath.

Before starting the hull repair, you should know the gel coat which forms the finish surface is pigmented resin, somewhere around fifteen thousands thick. Considering that in this surface there is no reinforcement, it is more likely to form crazings than the fiberglass underneath it. In this case, the hull repair is much easier than you think, mainly because it is not necessary to fix the crazings, except for appearance. To make a hull repair, you first need to ground away the cracked gel coat until you reach the fiberglass. The next step is to fill in a new gel coat, and then sand flush and polish it. If you experience a case of multiple crazing, the hull repair may turn up to be easier if you simply grind off the gel in the entire crazed area and spray another layer of gel coat.

Another problem you can face when making a hull repair is a fiberglass crack. If you notice a wide separation in the gel coat (as opposed to fine, hairline cracks that occur when the overcoat is damaged) you can be sure that the fiberglass is cracked. Ground off the gel coat using sandpaper in order to expose the fiberglass. The fiberglass is only damaged and needs to be removed if it appears white. In this case, the damage is rather serious and the hull repair must be done by an experienced repair shop.

« Back