erikgreen
Captain
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2007
- Messages
- 3,105
Re: Sea Ray Project
No, and I was surprised you were planning on it. Usually people do one or the other.
Okay, sure. Lots of folks want a nice, solid deck that won't chip or show wear easily, is waterproof, and looks good. There are a lot of solutions.
What the factory would do for a modern boat is gelcoat the floor with anti-skid patches on it, and maybe add carpet.
For a restoration like my own boat, I'm going to glass a wooden floor (completely encapsulate the wood to prevent rot) then paint an epoxy paint over that, adding anti-skid where needed.
Some people here have had excellent results with bed liner spray ons or roll on kits... basically the stuff that coats pickup truck boxes. You can do a kit of this yourself or pay someone to spray it. It's basically an indestructible rubbery layer that handles anything you can do to a boat... remember it's designed to have pallets of eg. cinder blocks put on it and not get messed up. If you do this, make sure to pick a non black and non white color... so it doesn't get either too hot or too bright in the sun.
Any of these will work for you... depends on what you want. If you have a fiberglass floor already, you can make sure it's waterproof and reasonably smooth, then coat it with gelcoat or paint and anti-skid. Like I've mentioned, not many people use gelcoat this way because it's hard to sand and if it doesn't set up the way you want it to look, you've got a lot of work to fix it. Epoxy paint or bedliner are equally or more durable and a lot easier to use.
Erik
No, and I was surprised you were planning on it. Usually people do one or the other.
You won't need to smooth the gelcoat if you don't want it smooth. You should be able to smooth the deck so no major dings show, then apply gelcoat with anti-skid and end up with a nice waterproof, anti-skid deck.
Rather than coating over and smoothing later, I'd mask off the areas you want to keep smooth and avoid getting them covered in the first place. Anti-skid compound is usually silica, IE you're adding sand or rock dust to your coating...makes it very, very hard to sand later.
Okay, sure. Lots of folks want a nice, solid deck that won't chip or show wear easily, is waterproof, and looks good. There are a lot of solutions.
What the factory would do for a modern boat is gelcoat the floor with anti-skid patches on it, and maybe add carpet.
For a restoration like my own boat, I'm going to glass a wooden floor (completely encapsulate the wood to prevent rot) then paint an epoxy paint over that, adding anti-skid where needed.
Some people here have had excellent results with bed liner spray ons or roll on kits... basically the stuff that coats pickup truck boxes. You can do a kit of this yourself or pay someone to spray it. It's basically an indestructible rubbery layer that handles anything you can do to a boat... remember it's designed to have pallets of eg. cinder blocks put on it and not get messed up. If you do this, make sure to pick a non black and non white color... so it doesn't get either too hot or too bright in the sun.
Any of these will work for you... depends on what you want. If you have a fiberglass floor already, you can make sure it's waterproof and reasonably smooth, then coat it with gelcoat or paint and anti-skid. Like I've mentioned, not many people use gelcoat this way because it's hard to sand and if it doesn't set up the way you want it to look, you've got a lot of work to fix it. Epoxy paint or bedliner are equally or more durable and a lot easier to use.
Erik
