I’m offering another reason: air pockets in the fiberglass layup in the original molding of the hulls. I don’t recall anyone citing air pockets in the joint between gel coat and underlying lamination's as a reason for gel coat crazing. Am I the only one lucky enough to have this defect?
On my 1983 15 Striper the hull gelcoat wasn’t chipping off, but it did have significant crazing throughout.
In literally every place I found a gel coat crack, I removed the gel coat completely down to the laminate below, and I found a pinhole void where I assume was an air pocket. To avoid having these cracks print through my new paint job, I removed every one with a belt sander or an angle grinder with a conical shaped 80-grit sanding wheel. In many places, there were so many cracks, I just removed entire sections of gel coat.
If others have discovered air pockets, I’d love to hear how you have repaired air pockets in the course of an AWLGRIP paint job.
ASIDE: my plan for painting after sanding out the air pockets:
- two to three coats AWLGRIP HULLGARD Hullgard
- two rounds of AWLFAIR, with sanding and shaping
- two to three coats High Build
- three coats AWLQUICK
- two to three coats TOP COAT
- lots of sanding in-between
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