Hi Bob, Dave

It sure would be nice to have somewhere that you could go to
get color matched gelcoat. For house paint, you just take a
sample of the faded color down to Home Depot, and they stick
under their computer color analyzer which spits out a recipe.

I've either got to learn how to tint gelcoat myself using the
little yellow/blue/red packs, or I need to find out how the
pros get the right colored gelcoat.

I suppose that learning how to tint would be educational and
possibly even fun once you got the knack of it.

RW Salnick wrote:
Dave wrote:

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:15:18 GMT, Don W
said:


I was not aware that a paint store could color match gel coat. Do
they sell gel coat also? I've got some repairs that I need to make
to my 79 catalina, and will need to match the original color.



Paint stores don't generally sell gelcoat. I ordered a quart of white
from a
marine supply place, but know the white will be too bright to use as is.

Picked up idea of having a paint store make the match on the CS mailing
list. Seems no reason why the pigments used to tint paint won't work
equally
well with gelcoat.

I am very curious what will come of this thread, as I have the same
problem. I agree that the pigments would not care whether they are in
apint or gelcoat or eposy. My concern is that the pigment CARRIER would
be incompatible with gelcoat or epoxy. And not all pigments are finely
ground solids - some are dyes, carried dissolved in the carrier, raising
another compatibility question.

I'm also curious to see how it will come out. Every time I've bought
automotive paint, the colors were premixed into a "color wheel" type
machine. I always assumed that these colors were also automotive paint
that was compatible with the base paint. Possibly I was wrong and am
about to learn something

Don W.


bob
s/v Eolian