Great forum. First post. I run a small fiberglass repair and refinish service that mostly works on boats. Been at it about 9 years now with considerable experience prior. I make every effort to use the best materials and processes to turn out top notch jobs as efficiently as possible, hence I’m on-line regularly doing research. Now to my current issue…
At a customers request I’ve agreed to spray a boat bottom in the factory gel-coat. The factory gel-coat is a CCP low voc product. I’ve found these low-voc gel-coats to be extremely finicky about cure. We use a CCP patch-aid for spot repairs and somehow make it work but it is less than predictable and the fast nature of the product makes it impracticle for large spray jobs. Can’t afford unexpected problems on this job so I’m open to suggestions. Here’s my plan - please critique…
Using a conventional gravity feed gun with 2.0 tip. Shop temperature 70 degrees.
Thin gel-coat with 10% styrene and 10% acetone by volume. Apply 3 coats allowing 3-5 minutes between coats. Let these coats go through an intial cure - about 1 hour and then apply 3 more thinned coats. Wait an hour and then apply final coats with CCP fast patch-aid as thinner. It also has wax for the final cure.
I’ve sprayed some test panels and this seemed to work fine. My biggest concern is using the solvents to thin the gel-coat. Also, we need enough film build to allow for wet sanding and buffing. BTW, I used to use Duratec additive but I’ve been advised that it is not compatible with some low-voc gel-coats. Depending on who I ask it’s hard to determine if this is really the case.
Any thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.