Stratos Gelcoat Work Cont... Progress and Questions: Long and Pic Heavy

[Stratos282]

Hello,
I have been working on my Stratos on and off work weeks now. I work 2 jobs so I don't get a lot of time to work on my boat. I'd like to share some pics of the progress I have made and will lead into a few questions I have. Please bear with me as this is the first time I have done anything like this.

Here is the before pic, which I have posted on here before.


Here is where I am at now after wet sanding with 800 and up to buffing with rubbing compound. It looks great as you see the reflections of the clouds in the low light as the sun goes down.


Now on to my question... When you look at the boat from the angle above it looks great. The gelcoat looks smooth and you cannot see any oxidation left. When you flip around and look from the other angle, it still looks dull and it looks like I should be sanding more. Look up by the black line...

There are a lot of scratches on this side from the previous owner.

Are my eyes and the angle of light playing tricks on me? I have buffed over this area and cannot seem to make the appearance look better (without sanding more). I will sand more if needed but it seems as in some areas I have over sanded. I have not sanded more or less in any area of the boat but check out the pic below. Is this in fact over sanding or some other damage that I am only seeing now with the oxidation removed? It gets worse if I continue to sand areas like this.


Another..


There was a lot of oxidation on this side and is what prompted me to sand with 800 as suggested. I don't feel I aggressively sanded these areas but the results show otherwise. I'm interested to hear your thought on this. The surface still feels smooth to the touch and not rough like mentioned in Basscat7's post.

A lot of people are saying enough already and get to fishing but I want my boat to look as good as possible. I may be a little OCD as well, haha. I am fine if I am to a point where this is as good as it's going to get... I'd rather have some of the pro's advise to see if more sanding is needed or just be happy with where the gelcoat is to prevent further damage. Sorry for the long winded, pic heavy post. You all have been great helping me and I appreciate the hell out of it.



Modified by Stratos282 at 1:08 AM 5/23/2011

[Michael Stelly]

looking nice, there were a few spots on my hull just like the pics you posted. I started with 800 in those area and moved to a finer sandpaper from that point on. I then used the 3M compound that is good for up to 1200 grit scratches.

that second to last pic you have did you compound that area?

[Stratos282]

No that is before compound but looks pretty much the same after...

[eojmama]

Im pretty sure you sanded through the gel, but I want to hear what the others think...

[BASSCAT7]

Unfortunatley it looks like your boat was sprayed with a really thin layer of gelcoat. The Silver areas you are talking about look to be sanded down to almost the flakes, especially the bottom pic.
You can see in the bottom pic where the gel was really thin on the raised radius area.
where the indentation creates an angle top and bottom ,the gel was sprayed really thin the raised area surrounding the indent has the silver flake showing thru all the way around the radius.

[Stratos282]

That sucks but I figured that's what it was. It didn't take much get down to it so it must have been sprayed thin like you said. Rookie mistake for sure but I am still learning a lot.

This side of the boat you see took the most damage from the sun and a lot of scratches and such from the previous owner. I'm going to wrap up that side and figure it's about as good as it's going to get and move on with it. Over all it's a huge improvement from where it was.

[davidikus]

Maybe you can get Iguana to make you some kind of sweet looking graphic to stick over the area to cover it up. I am referring to just the area with the indention on the boat. Just a thougt.