I need to remove the paint becuase the vinyl blue I have selected has a bit of transparency to it, What is the best way of removing the paint with out damaging the underlying gelcoat. The boat is currently blue with some red highlights but in some areas the blue has worn off and there is red under it so I think the boat may have had red paint first then painted over with the blue. My expections would be when done that there is little to no difference between where the paint used to be and where the white gelcoat is now. I have a attached a picture for reference.

Thanks
Jim

I would say , sanding it off to the gelcoat and buff it back out.

What baout media blasting? Walnut, plastic or soda. I hear they are very friendly on gelcoat and fiberglass if done correctly

I quess that would all work ,but expensive + the stuff all over in all the cracks and gabs. The sanding you can do yourself on a weekend. LOL

Thats a good point, maybe start with 900 and then finish with something like 2000. I am not sure if I would want to go down to something like 600 or 300 in fear of damaging the gelcoat under the paint.

Couldn't they just apply a layer of white vinyl just over the blue and then put the blue vinyl over that? It's going to be a fair amount of work to sand all that paint off and then finish it all back out just to see it get covered up.



www.bowkersfiberglass.com

how about sanding with 320 or so and prime, pint or gell over it.

so I bought some paint stripper that is safe for gelcoat. Put it on a test area and left it up to 24 hours and it didn't even touch the blue so now I think it might be gelcoat! God damn it!