New mould finnish is flat.

For gawds sake Tunnels, get of the preachers box and help the poor sod !!!!

He doesnt need the lecture, he has come and laid the facts on the table, and wants advice, not counselling.


DavyBoy - I am a bit confused by your process description.

You wet and dried to 1000 the old mould, then the flowcoat is for the new mould lining I presume ?

What is the "200 then 500" ? It sounds like grit sizes, but I hope its not fibreglass cloth weights.

Are you also planning to go to 1000 grit the flowcoat as well ?

 

ok ok davyboy
I still say if you had used your head and thought a little more you wouldn't be having all these problems and having to do all this work and wasted time and materials !!
So lets get back to the issues at hand !!
If you going to coat over the surface with the Duratek you will need to sand with a coarser paper than 1000. SOMETHING LIKE 220 or 320 or something similar will give you a better bite for the Duratek to adhere to and hold on !! Its a physical bond not a chemical bond you getting !!
Do yourself a test panel before you get into the real thing as well !! get it right first then do the mould .
Duratek is easy to sand if caught at the right time but if its left to long its really hard work !!

Still would like to see some pictures posted !!

 

Correct.

The 200/500 are compounds to bring up a good surface finish.

That will then be polished/ buffed up.

So now as I understand it. I will need to roughen up the primed mould to give the duratec a better chance of gripping. As in I dry sand it.

Ok cheers.

 

This could be another one of them !!

You need to really think about everything you have done, and should have done ,and are about to do !!!.
Didn't you learn anything from that post with all the pictures I sent you to follow through ??

When the mould came off the plug it was dull !! Right ??
what did you do to the mould at that point ??
Did you try to sand and buff and polish it ??
did you sand it and paint it ??
what was the product you pained it with ??
Got a product name and brand name ??
Was it a two pot paint or a single pot?? open, mix, and spray !!
But now you want to paint it yet again but this time with Duratek !!
some where the paint you used before really needs to come off back to the original gel coat to be 100% safe that the Duratek is going to stick and adhere properly to the mould , because if the other product you uses is not stick 100% to the surface and after you put the Duratek over it how do you know it will stay there ??
How do you know there wont be a chemical reaction and the Duratek wont loosen the paint underneath ?? it may not peel now but there's a really good chance it could do in the future some time !!!
Its sure and hell a risk I would never want to take !!! it could simply flake off in big sheets for what ever reason .If you did just a really fine sand of the moulds gel coated surface there's virtually nothing for the paint to stick or adhere to !!
The Duratek is the best product there is, but its not a fix it all , if there's a crappy paint job underneath and being covered up !!
Its making me wonder what the mould is really like to begin with !!was it just dull , how thick is the gel coat ? because you can do some serious sanding on a mould usually and still never get to the glass !!
This job gets more messy by the minute with each post !!
I can see this being another one of those jobs in the making I reckon !!

 

You wanted advise and you got it straight !!! no frills and no beating around the bushes!.
A while back We spend hours and hours helping one young guy and wrote pages and pages of stuff but was a complete waste of time he just charged off and did his own thing because he thought he knew better but that didn't work and cost him dearly simply because he didn't listen properly !!
Glass work is a really simple job and a 10 year old kid can do it as long as he follows the basic steps and gets them in the right order !!.

 

Try the sanding route first. The gel coat on my 1986 15' Whaler was flat dull and chalky, but not marked or chipped and I didn't want to paint it. So I wet sanded it with a DA sander. I started with 300 grit. Then went to 600-1000-1500-2000-3000 grit. Now I can see my face in the hull. For the higher grit discs I used Abralon sanding pads. They were originally made for sanding fine furniture, but made there way into the bowling ball business and are routinely used for changing the surface of bowling balls for different lane oil conditions. thats how I found them. You can get them on the Internet. Do a small area first with all the grits and see if it will work. Won't cost much to try, and will probably work. Good luck.

rich

 

I wet sanded it of course, and it went pretty fast, about 6 hours from start mto finish.

rich

 

so you did all the right things and now you can reflect on the results !!

a little thought ,and do the right steps one after the other and you reap the rewards !! probably wasn't to painful either !! now can enjoy looking at yourself !