Polishing gelcoat

[beanpoleuk]

A couple of people have looked at my website and asked how I managed to polish up the gelcoat on my Chesil Speedster.

Firstly, the Chesil Speedster is very good body mold with only a few imperfections and a generous thickness of gelcoat, plus they provide a 'tub' of the gelcoat and some activator.

I am not an expert but the method I used is:

1) Rubbed all the flash lines down with 400, 800, 1200 and then 1500 grit wet&dry

2) Mixed some gelcoat from the supplied tub and filled any holes and imperfections, then 1) again.

3) Now comes the hard work... go over everything with Farecia G3 and a polishing wheel, (very messy).

4) Do it all again with Farecia G10, (even more mess, usually goes all over the garage wall as well)

5) Finally Wax polish.

It takes a lot of patience and elbow grease, but the results can be very good and you have the gelcoat to fill in any stone chips etc at a later date.

The problem area tends to be the 'edges' of the panels which show the Fiberglass and gelcoat layers, so I used Halfords Gloss black paint which appears to be a very good match.

I will see how the finish lasts and may end up painting eventually but I have to say that at the moment I am very happy with the final result. polished gelcoat seems to give a very high gloss of the like you normally see with a clear coat finish over paint.