Last year when I bought my 241 Liberator, part of the deal on selling my old boat was a new paint job on my Lib. Well, the time is coming fast, and I need some advice on what to get and quanities.

First, we are going to re-gel the boat in white, for ease of graphics changes. I am not redoing the bottom, only the sides, and transom area. The upper deck is fine, just needs a buffing.

So what would be the best spray on gel for a first timer to use? And anyone have any idea on the quanity to get for a 24 foot boat? I dont want to come up short.

I also have a few cracks around the exhaust in the gel, I hear grinding them down at a "V" angle and filling them with gel is the best thing to do. Correct?

Last question, the previous owner stuffed the bow into something hard enough to just crack the tip of the bow by the rub strip. What would be the best way to repair that before we lay down the fresh gel coat?

Any help you guys can offer is greatly appreicated. I am really looking forward to seeing my Lib look like it did when new in 1988.

to be honest im not sure i would recomend you gel it as a firstimer. The labor and risk factor is much higher for gel than paint. i will post more on the subject later havent got the time to type right now.

Let me clarify a little. The guy who bought my runabout is actually a painter/manager of a large bodyshop. He will be doing all of the acutal work. I am just there to open beers and do the lackey work.

hehe . . . got'chya

well gel coating is a huge job compared to painting. Unless he has experience in spraying and finalizing gel it can be difficult for the first timer. heres how i'de do it

repair all stress cracks. V out all cracks and use only polyester fairing fillers like West systems 404 or 407. no epoxy under poly gel coats!

sand entire surface to be geled with 180 very thoroughly


best way to spray gel through conventional spray equiptment is to use Duratech gloss additive/thinner. if you go this route i would not go more than 50% even though the instructions say 100%. problem is it is poor to cover like that. you might want to think about doing a base layer of white gel first. this is why it is so labor intensive. you will need a "dump" style gun and need to spray it with only catylist and a waxing agent added. it will cover quickly like this but will need to be completly sanded in 180/240 again before you spray a final "gloss added" couple of coats of gel. now after that cures sand again with 240 than 320 than 600 than 800 than power buff . . . piece-o-cake


ok . . . now if you wanna go paint?

sand surface with 320, shoot PPG's single stage Concept white, go boat'in next day

seriously if you need some more tech help feel free to call my celly 419-461-1484 always willing to help out.

Wow Dave, thanks for the awesome answer. One question, would you still use the West Systems Polyester filler if you decided to just spray the boat in PPG white?

No matter which way I do it, i have to fix these cracks, they drive me nuts and look terrible.

yes but you will need to spot prime the spots and block before paint. the west system is a dry powder that you add to whatever resin you. you can use it in poly or epoxy. any hairline cracks cannot be primed over they will need to be V'ed out and filled.

Ok, that seems like the simpilest and fastest way to do this. The Painter should have plenty of blocking experiance. Definetly more experiance blocking then Gel coating.

Any recommendations on a resin? I am basically using this as a shopping list for the job.

evercoat is probably the most commercially available and works fine. keep us posted on the progress

Ok Dave, I got the stuff you recommended. I have spent all weekend and week so far stripping the shiny bits off, and we go for paint Saturday. I just cant get the damn stripes off the waterline. Hoping a heat gun will help on Saturday before we DA the whole boat.

I know, way too many pictures, but I want a true before and after....

www.michiganspeed.com/dreamer1q/Liberator

Now I just need to find a good supplier of rub strip. Mine was wasted and as far as I can tell original

try finding Astro Smart Eraser wheels. they work great taking off old stripes. for rubrail go to rubrails.com or any TACO supplier. good luck with the paint job.