1984 MasterCraft

[h20skier]

Hi, I am in the process of making some repairs on the above boat and had a couple problems I was hoping someone could advise me on. The boat is obviously older, but has been very well maintained and is in excellent overall condition.

I have wet sanded (1000, 1500, then 2000) some light to medium scratches from the top deck. The scratches came out great and it has polished up nicely with rotary polisher using 3m super duty rubbing compound followed by finesse it II.

Issue#1: The gel coat looks brand new wherever I wet sanded, but has a very slight brownish look in the color everywhere else. The original color is grey. The existing areas (that were not wet sanded) compound and polish nicely and are very glossy, but the coloring is still slightly different than the repaired area.

Issue#2: The wet sanded area still has some slight sanding scratches from the wet sanding process (from the 1000, I guess?). This area has polished very glossy and looks great, however when looking at an angle you can see the scratches.


I have tried an oxylic acid based stain remover for the brownish color, but that did nothing. The 3m super duty compound doesn’t remove the staining either. I am wondering, could the rubbing compound I am using be bad (it bought 2 years ago)? I would think the compound would remove surface stains and take out any 1000 sanding scratches too, no? Someone has recommended Meguiars #91 Power Cut, has anyone used this? Could this potentially take away the stain and remove the scratches? Do I just need to wet sand the whole top deck and spend more time/effort with the 1500 and 2000 grade steps before I compound?

Thanks in advance for any information!

[yachtfisher]

Hi

Sounds like you may need to wet sand the whole topsides to get a match.

I am not a big fan of the superduty compound (it is brown) and I have found that if the gelcoat has any micro pitting the dark abrasive material will get lodged in the pitting, however the efect is a pepered look not a uniform brown.

As for the scratches sound like you will need to polish with a finer abrasive polish and should get your scratches OR if you can see the scratches are from the sanding with the 1000 paper you may need to spend some more time with the higher grits and maybee try meguires dimond cut 2.0 after

Lots of work !!!!

mark

[Greg Nichols]

My opinion. If you got sanding scratches from the wet sanding you need to switch to Megs uni-grit paper. Many other papers don't have accurate grits in the paper and sometime you get random grits mixed in.

Have you power washed the boat after the wet sanding? I've notice the same thing about 3m super duty also, after an aggressive power wash I seem to get rid of left over residue. I would wet sand a small area with this problem and see what happens.

I love Megs 105 for my compound then follow with finesse it II.

If you have photos that will help us see what might be going on.

Cheers,
GREG