I'm pulling my hair out!

[tommyboy]

I'm trying to get rid of some of the fogged look thats in my clear coat. I've tried sanding and then waxing, penetrol......and nothing seems to work. Well the penetrol looks good for a few days then its back to normal. Anyone have a solution? Someone mentioned sanding with 1500 paper then spraying gel coat over it. Any help????

[PAR]

Cut the surface until smooth and free of oxidized gel coat, then polish to satisfaction or until you plow through the gel coat, which ever comes first. Hopefully it'll shine before you see mat.

[alan white]

A common mistake is to sand with too fine a paper. 80 grit is a good place to start with a well oxidized gel coat. Then thru the grits--- the closer the numbers the better and don't skip. I do it by hand and it takes a good 10 minutes per square foot, and I do a 6 sq ft section in an hour.
The outer surface, if looked at under a microscope, is porous, like swiss cheese. The idea is to get down below that porous layer, or as deep as you can without going so deep that you go right through the gel coat.
As PAR said, cut the surface (by sanding as described). Take one small representative section and see what happens. If you're up against painting you have nothing to lose.
I've had good luck with boats I've resurfaced. Gel coat is usually a lot thicker than you think, and even 80 grit, if used evenly, can be effectively leave most of the original gel coat intact.
Stay away from power sanders unless you know how to control them, although they are a big time saver. I use a random orbit sander until I get to wet sanding paper at about 320 grit.
Then I wet sand to 1000 grit and buff with rubbing compound, and follow by machine polishing.

[Commuter Boats]

I'm not sure that I understand what your material is and any response would be specific to that material, paint, gelcoat, whatever