Painting an 85 chris cat. Proper prep.
 

Boat is all original white gel, my question is what would be the procedure to prep the old gel for paint?


I have been told by a couple people that trying to get all the waves out of the sides would be a waste of time because they will come back. Anyone else care to weigh in on this?

What should I scuff the boat to before priming? 320 or 500?

Can I just scuff it seal it and paint it or should I lay something down like an epoxy or a hood urethane over the gel first then the sealer over that?

Thanks for the help.

First off i cant understand why anyone would bother to tell you that trying to make your hull sides straight would be a waste of time , and then.......... tell you that they will come back considering i have done more then my share of long boarding on hull sides over the years for that reason alone because there is a right and a wrong way of doing things . Bigo , personally when ever i prep a surface for paint it usally is in #220 .

Bigo , i forgot to mention that re-working the hull side's or making them straight is a matter of personal taste which in the long run in my opinion with a little X-tra work can be well worth it ........ just my 2 cents which is three cents short of a nickel .

I have never painted a boat, done cars and parts and so forth, but never a boat. This thing is an 85 Chris Cat with long flat sides so waves are very easily noticable especially when you are trained to see inperfections in paint.

What should I use for my first primer to go over the old gel coat and the kitty hair/glass work I have to do?

After that I'll shoot high build and then block and build and block and build and block, to at least get it better. Not sure I am gonna go the full distance with it but somthing will be better then nothing. You got any good tips or tricks or suggestions to blocking out those big flat sides? Any recomendations for long boards or air file or anything to help speed up the process?

I wuldnt call it a waste of time to get big imperfections/ waves out but it is a long arduous and mostly loosing battle. The problem is most of those imperfections span vary long areas where bulkheads are attached or where panels were pulled green from the mold and have shrunk in after complete cure. There are two things going against you here, those shallow areas would take a ton of filler to bring up to level and thermal expansion and contraction of those joints would bring most of them back eventually anyway. Take a six or eight foot ruler or strip of plywood and try to span one of the areas to see what i mean about filler depth needed. Another problem stems from the actual shape of the boat. High crown areas, think Outerlimits/Mystic/most CnC generated boats these days, always look straight simply because your eye cannot detect differences across a crowned surface. On the other hand most older boats, Cigs/Apache/ect, all were built using long flat panels with no crown at all. Your eye is very sensitive and its much easier to "gun sight" the side of these kinds of boats and they will simply never look like the surface of a CD. The best you can do is minimize all this and make sure general surface imperfections are taken out and the highest quality paint job applied. If you really want to spend some time straightening you'd be best off re gelcoating the boat and fair that out instead of any automotive primers. Automotive high build primers are to soft and will cause problems if you try and over fill with them plus you would have to dump gallon after gallon to even come close to what a few coats of properly applied gel would do. Gelcoat actually sands very easy in comparison and your options are greater towards the end of the process. You will have a nice white virgin surface just waiting for new color

By the way NO kitty hair on boats :D do all repairs in resin/glass/mat and light filling with 3M's premium marine filler and gelcoat after all repairs are done.