Gelcoat stripping

[Guest]

Planning to strip the gelcoat under the water line this year and do my own epoxy application. Any experiences on painless methods either DIY or contractor would be warmly welcomed.
P.S. I have what I think is a rather neat drying solution to take account of the cold, wet UK winters so I will post the results when I have done it.

 

[oldsaltoz]

G’day Scupper.
You can use an electric planer to strip the gel coat, but the edges of the blades will dig in if you are not super careful.
I used a 5 inch grinder fitted with a concrete grinding disk, it removes gel coat without clogging and not a lot of dust as the particle size is like fine sugar. This also produces a nice feathered edge at the waterline. The disk looks like a starfish, high in the centre with raised legs radiating from the centre swept back in the direction of rotation, one disk will do the whole job.
Don’t forget to use goggles and a good quality mask, not the silly paper ones. An office chair with an air ram height adjuster is great for the underside and the back muscles.
Fairing is made easy with the back of a strait backed saw and some ‘Q’ cells or other closed cell balloons, followed by lots of sanding with a torture board and three coats of epoxy resin.
International put out a product designed for protecting the underside from osmosis, called Interprotect, it can be applied by brush, roller or sprayed, the latter being the best finish.

I hope this helps; it worked for me and no problems since.

Soavagoodweekend Old Salt Oz……

 

[AuntyPodes]

& - to avoid the electric planer blade edges digging-in -
grind the corners of the blades into a small radius.
Actually it pays to do that with every scraping tool you use - bar one -
that being the one you use to get into corners.

 

[milltech]

I have no personal experience of this, but I shared a boat show stand in the USA with the very nice people at Gelplane and the device seemed good with good reports. I think it attaches to a vacuum to take away all the nasty.

www.gelplane.co.uk, sales@gelplane.co.uk, 01656773408

John