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Jonathan W.
 
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Default painting a fiberglass dinghy

The original gelcoat is the surface of choice. Once you paint, you start
a maintenance cycle.

Davis makes a product called, I believe, Fiberglass Stain Remover, which
is essentially oxalic (sp?) acid in a jelly base that does a great job
of cleaning up stained fiberglass.

Use that, and follow up with one of the many mild polishing compounds
(perhaps someone will pipe up with brand recommendations) then wax, and
you should be able to get it looking almost good as new.

Unless the scratches go through the gelcoat, you might want to wait and
see what they look like after stain removal before playing with fillers.
It is incredibly hard to match white surfaces and you may find you draw
more attention to the "scratch" by trying to fix it than leaving it
mostly alone.

You might also look at the Sailnet.com website. The store is defunct,
but they are leaving the web pages up, along with a store of 1,500 or so
articles, many of which are on maintenance of different boat surfaces, etc.

Have fun,

Jonathan

seawitch wrote:

i just looked a bit closer , this dinghy of mine was never painted just
dull and scratched up , i wonder would be way to save the original coat
just "bring it up" and feather in the scratch with epoxy ? what you all
think?



--
I am building my daughter an Argie 10 sailing dinghy, check it out:
http://home.comcast.net/~jonsailr