Quote:
Originally Posted by skidgear
Tim,
I was trying to determine from the second photo if the blaster only took off the paint and stopped before ripping off the entire gel coat. That appears to be the case, although it's difficult to tell for sure. The reason I ask has to do with determinihg the best method for removing paint only. I would never remove the entire gel coat for a barrier coat job unless I determined there was a massive blister problem or delam issue. If the majority of the gel coat is solid, fix the blisters and put the barrier coat over the existing gel coat. But again, it's crucial to be able to identify blisters in the gel coat after the paint is stripped (and it's impossible to identify the extent of the problem without removing bottom paint). If blasting erases all the telltales, then chemical strip might be a better approach (for a barrier coat over existing gel coat). Also, I believe most yards would use the peeling machines to remove an entire gelcoat.
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In 2004, we hired a contractor to sandblast off 20 plus years of hard bottom paint. All the surveys said we had "minor" gel-coat blisters. The idea was to remove all the paint and the gel-coat in local areas. With sandblasting, heat is generated from the friction. The heat raised blisters that we didn't know we had, lots of them and some were deep. After the sand blasting our next next step was to peel the hull and start repairs. We spent $1,100 on the sandblaster to find out we had a serious blister issue. And peeling the hull is not an exact science. How deep do you peel? After the gel-coat, what you take off you have to put back. Do you only go so deep then spot repair the blisters? As it turned out, 3 years later and after $10,000 spent on the blister repair, we had blisters again.
I believe this is the method that Keith had done. We considered this option before we sandblasted/peeled the hull in 2004. We probably should have done nothing or spent the big bucks on this process.
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