Is there a repair kit for small chips in the fiberglass?

gssaharris

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Freedom 285
I got caught in the wind and caught by bow and got a chip the size of a dime on the bow just above the rubber rub rail. Is there a repair kit for this that works well?
 
short answer probably not.

its hard to color match gelcoat, especially when grady doesnt use plain white. what makes it even harder is that gelcoat will bleach/fade in the sun over time, so even "new grady gelcoat" may not be a perfect match. if well cared for (ie covered or uv protected) you may get lucky. might just be easiest to have a fiberglass guy do it for you. a good one will color match perfectly
 
You could try Spectrum gelcoat repair paste.They carry the colour according to year of manufacturing for Grady. It will be close and I doubt noticeable in a dime size repair. I have used it on my 208 with success.
 
How old is your hull. Over time, the gelcoat bleaches out and becomes whiter ( but not white white)
The Spectrum color probably will be too dark. In those cases where I am more concerned about a bare spot with the fiberglass showing and not so much the color, I use Marinetex paste white . It is less expensive than Spectrum. Although I haven't seen theses in the store, there are MarineTex coloring agents that can be mixed into the white paste. MarineTex is epoxy based so I don't think that polyester resin gel coat dyes are compatible but that would be an interesting experiment.
 
How old is your hull. Over time, the gelcoat bleaches out and becomes whiter ( but not white white)
The Spectrum color probably will be too dark. In those cases where I am more concerned about a bare spot with the fiberglass showing and not so much the color, I use Marinetex paste white . It is less expensive than Spectrum. Although I haven't seen theses in the store, there are MarineTex coloring agents that can be mixed into the white paste. MarineTex is epoxy based so I don't think that polyester resin gel coat dyes are compatible but that would be an interesting experiment.
I used MarineTex below the water on old transducer holes and it adhered well. MT color did not match, but it doesn't bother me there.
On other areas of the hull, I have used Spectrum, it still matches well on my 25 year old hull.
 
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Below the water line and under the hull gel coat doesn't get the same UV damage as above. I also assume your hull is not painted with anti foul
 
Spectrum has different colors for GW by year of build.
 
I’d look at marine Tex and a color matched gel coat.