How to tidy up damage?

[Murv]

This sort of thing

There are a couple of areas like that, inside and out, what's the easiest way to tidy them over?
The boat is over 30 Years old and tatty so it's not worth doing major rectification work, but it would be nice to tidy it up a bit.

 

[neil_s]

This sort of thing

There are a couple of areas like that, inside and out, what's the easiest way to tidy them over?
The boat is over 30 Years old and tatty so it's not worth doing major rectification work, but it would be nice to tidy it up a bit.

Give it a good clean and a polish before you do anything else - it will look a lot better and you will be able to see where work really needs to be done.

Neil

 

[TQA]

Give it a good clean and a polish before you do anything else - it will look a lot better and you will be able to see where work really needs to be done.

Neil

Arrgh NO POLISH

If you are going to fill the damage the a lot of polishes make good release agents preventing the filler sticking.

Fill in the dings with an epoxy filler. I like West system with 410 filler but buying for small jobs may not be economical. Check a model shop for small quantities.

Take a well cleaned component to Halfords or similar and get the best matched rattle can of paint and some high build grey or white primer.

Sand and paint.

 

[William_H]

As said clean it up with wet and dry sand paper. very fine for where it is just marked rather than damaged. If there are real holes then fill with epoxy with a filler like micro balloons. I have had a lot of success with 2 pack polyurethane paint. It is expensive however. Get it from a paint shop who may be able to tint it to just the white colour you need. There are hundreds of shades of white.
good luck olewill

 

[35mm]

My advice, seriously, is, that unless you are bored and have time to kill, just make sure any damage is structurally sound and sealed so that no water gets in and makes it worse. If you really want to cosmetically treat areas of damage, then clean (DO NOT POLISH), and grind the damage out. Then fill it in using filler applied with a comb type spreader i.e. a plastic spreader with notches cut in the edge. Once applied, you can then easily fair it in with a sanding block to match contour and depth. As the comb gives you a furrowed finish, it means you only have to sand half the surface area and getting depth and contour is much easier. Once happy with the depth and contour, fill the furrows, sand to finish, paint and then polish. The chances are that the nice, shiny repair job will make the rest of the boat look tatty though!

 

[Murv]

That's fantastic, thanks all.
Will have a go at that over the next couple of weeks, weather allowing!

As I say I'm not looking for a pristine repair, just to tidy it up a bit. Problem is we polished the topsides yesterday so now all the mangy bits above are looking 10x worse in comparison!

 

[rob2]

You've probably already realised all the answers boil down to a thorough repair or nothing. Actually the filling and fairing is not so bad, quite therapeutic in fact. Unless you have anartist's eye for colour, I woulg suggest you don't even think about trying to match - just mask off a suitable width and paint a go faster stripe in grey or black (unless you have another colour to set off).

Rob.