I wish i had some PVA here aga and my preval sprayer. I need to gel coat a plug and i don’t want the gel to fully cure on the surface. I don’t want to go thru the whole process of duratec clear or duratec primer.
Once i have a shop again i’ll switch over to Duratec products for plug coating.
Have you ever tried just to do your infusion with out any gel coat?
Yes and once you find a semi perm release that works well for this the parts pop out easily. Once the parts are coming out good with no pin holes you will clear coat them after wards easily with great success.
I experimented with this for a while as i wanted to skip the gel coat part. Marbocote make a semi perm specifically for use on a mould being used for infusion without first spraying on gel coat.
hope that is of some help.
That is very interesting, but, how strong will be the top coat with the clear only?? I think, all these gel coats are much stronger than clear coats.
I got my gel coat today , it is a Polyester gel coat. I mixed with the accetone (5%) then sprayed. The only thing, i have some orange peel on the surface.
I think my air pressure was high-65psi
I am using a 2.5mm tip HVLP gun
Also, the outside temperature was 68 degree today
It looks okay, but i think i can spray better.
One more thing, i just sprayed ONE THICK coat. Could be that the problem?
What is the best way/steps of spraying a gel coat?
You can’t avoid orange peel on gelcoat, it’s to thick to even out. i dont know about using the duratec additive though, since that thins it out, it may level out better.
technically, the textbook “correct” thinner to use is styrene but I’ve also used small amounts of acetone and other things with no problems but I was told that the physical properties will be diminished somewhat if you do that.
The best low budget way to spray gel coat smoothly is with a pressure pot but you have to watch out not to let it kick in the bucket or you may sorry, hoses are not cheap to replace either. The pressure pot gives you a very smooth surface and will also eliminate the porosity problem that you would get with a dump gun. Also, there is no need to reduce the gel cote if you use a pressure pot. I always spray my tooling gel that way and get great results with no porosity.