OXBLOOD Gelcoat Nova craft repair and dynel skids?

[larry mchenry]

I am sick and tired of gelcoat damage on a nova craft, successful with repairing oxblood deep red gelcoat. I plan to run a layer of dynel skid plate all along the whole
center bottom hull ridge line about +/- 3 inches either side. Will dynel wet well with WEST SYSTEMS 650? Anyone know if I can pigment OXBLOOD like red powder into the gflex 650?

 

[Alan Gage]

What kind of gel coat damage are you getting? Scratches or chipping?

Dynel will certainly provide you with abrasion resistance but it's going to look awful without multiple fill coats. In my experience pigmented epoxy resin used to wet out cloth is too thin to be opaque and it takes many, many, fill coats to achieve enough depth to be close to opaque. I think it would take a lot to cover up dynel.

While I'm a big fan of dynel for skid plates I'd be tempted to use S-glass in your situation because of the larger area and, since you're talking about matching gel coat, I assume aesthetics are important. S-glass would be nearly invisible once wetted out and would take far fewer fill coats.

Alan