Repairing fiberglass: Untraditional methods?

Anything goes in the world of fiberglass and plastic



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PostPosted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 7:39 am
DarrelK wrote:Well, yes and no....you can easily use meth. chlor. to "melt" the area making it look like the crack is trying to reform, however the fiberglass just doesn't recover like that making the area weaker. And, again, you are not addressing or FIXING what caused the problem in the first place. Most of my experience with this over the years was doing our own research into producing "safer" stripping chemistry for fiberglass as well as some other plastics. Although we were somewhat successful in coming up with formulations that can do this you just can't completely get around the fact that there is some melting/distorting of the fiberglass resin. Then, we usually found out that trying to layer or attach more fiberglass over that just resulting in a peeling delam. We could never compete with just taking razor blades, sandpaper, etc., to do the stripping with much less stress to the fiberglass/plastic surface. Dave White, the former owner of Kwick Kleen over in Indiana had a fiberglass/plastic stripper in his inventory for many years (it was about the best I had ever seen) but sold very little of it.....it's not that it didn't work but people would just tried to be to aggressive with it leaving distorted surfaces......

I love this forum, the answers are perfect.

I love experimenting on things, so this is very interesting to me. I'm dealing with crushing stress microfractures in some of my parts from an impact (spiderwebbing sort-of). No stress applies to the areas under normal use. They aren't surface to surface either. Just visible inside on the unpainted side. Would be super cool to wipe over them and they vanish. But I believe that is gelcoat and not resin.

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PostPosted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 7:56 am
Gelcoats are a little different. They vary so much because of what "thickness" they were applied at. I've seen them laid in the mold at 6 or 7 mils back in the day and we had one company years ago that would blow them in up to 20 mils thick.... I've seen many, many, examples of that companies 20 mil stuff and even with almost 40 years of age on some of their kit cars there was little to no cracking anywhere on the bodies. Replacement fiberglass panels coming from China now....I doubt if that "sandable" style gel coat is even 3 mils thick.....so you think it might crack down the road????......
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PostPosted: Sat Jul 06, 2019 10:33 am
DarrelK wrote:Gelcoats are a little different. They vary so much because of what "thickness" they were applied at. I've seen them laid in the mold at 6 or 7 mils back in the day and we had one company years ago that would blow them in up to 20 mils thick.... I've seen many, many, examples of that companies 20 mil stuff and even with almost 40 years of age on some of their kit cars there was little to no cracking anywhere on the bodies. Replacement fiberglass panels coming from China now....I doubt if that "sandable" style gel coat is even 3 mils thick.....so you think it might crack down the road????......


Nope, I wouldn't expect the cracks to return unless it was literally in another accident. Not weight or support bearing in any way.
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