boat wax

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kensnider
Posts: 54
Joined: Fri Jun 04, 2010 6:12 am
Location: U.S.A.

boat wax

Post by kensnider »

What's the best boat wax? What's the best way to take light to med. scratches out of the gell coat? Thanks Ken
Rollins
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2010 11:48 am

Re: boat wax

Post by Rollins »

Mothers or McGuire's both make a quality wax. Some very minor scratches can be removed by using rubbing compound. To acquire a nice shine you need to follow up with a polish, and then wax. More aggressive scratches can be removed by wet sanding with fine sandpaper. I would start with 1000grit, and then follow up with 1500 grit and then 2000 grit. Make sure not to go crazy with the sanding as you could possibly burn/sand all the way thru the gel coat. I would recommended using a soft block while sanding and try to avoid heavily sanding on sharp curves or humps. After that you can remove your sand scratches with your compound, then polish & wax. An orbital buffer with a wool pad would work best when using compound, foam pad with polish, but the final shine can be achieved by hand. Your local autobody/collision/detail shops could also help you with this as they do it daily on cars. I could type forever on this subject so let me know if you have any questions.

Rollins
toddmc
Posts: 352
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2010 9:07 am
Location: La Quinta, CA

Re: boat wax

Post by toddmc »

This topic has been covered a couple of times in the archives.See if you can find it. If you spay a wet rag with a protectant like BTS, you will never have to use regular wax again. I use BTS (a lot of guys said they like Perigrine on the last thread) on a wet rag everytime I get off the water. I quickly wipe it with a dry towel and it even protects well against the Colorado River deposits.
Last edited by toddmc on Fri Mar 11, 2011 8:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
Greg E.
Posts: 173
Joined: Wed Jun 15, 2005 7:05 am

Re: boat wax

Post by Greg E. »

I posted this about a month ago.

I asked the same question on this forum about a year ago and got a lot of very good recommendations so I decided to try a few and see what really worked. I had a lot of very small scratches (from shoes) on both the front and aft gunwhales.

Regular boat cleaners and polished did not help the little cracks. I tried hand applying the Mothers 3 stage and hand applying the 3M Marine Finesse-it II Rubbing compound and finishinig polish. Both did a nice job but did not take the little micro
scratches out.

Then I tried compounding, then sanding with 600 grit, then 1000 grit and then 1500 grit wet dry sandpaper and then hand applying the 3M Finesse products again. This really really worked well and took out all the scratches and made it look and feel like new but it was a lot of work.

So I decided to use more POWER and instead of sanding by hand I used a buffing wheel with just the compound and then the poliish (3M Marine Finesse it II) and this worked best of all with the least amount of elbow grease. So my recommendation is what ever product you choose, use power tools to apply. By Hand the only way to get the scratches out is sandpapering, but a power buffer will do it without sanding. I have continued to use the 3M product by hand to maintain the shine and they have done a really good job.

Hope that helps a little.

Greg E
Rollins
Posts: 29
Joined: Sat Nov 20, 2010 11:48 am

Re: boat wax

Post by Rollins »

For scratches, the best thing to do is to go to a local body shop or detail shop. All the sandpaper, compound, polish, buffer & pads will cost you at least $100+, along with lots of time and effort. A honest body shop should charge you anywhere between $30-100 depending on how many scratches you have. And It would only take them a few hours. If your anywhere near Chico, send me a PM. Just my .02

Rollins
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