[quote=dennisMe]I can only answer from personal experience. I read so many conflicting opinions on the matter that I decided to just give it a try. I have an older boat and basically nothing to lose, so I figured, what the heck!
I have been using epoxy for repairs all over my boat since I bought it, about five years ago. I went with epoxy because I had the stuff lying around and it is an actual glue, unlike polyester which is not much of a glue at all.
Anyway, here's what I did, as accurately as I can remember:
When it came time to remove the decks on my Nacra 5.2 early last spring I did everything with epoxy because I didn't want the deck seams failing under load. I also encountered some spots which required grinding/sanding out all the glass and re-laminating the structural laminate from scratch.
I let the (correctly measured and mixed!) epoxy cure for two full days at around 20 degrees celcius. I wiped the epoxy down with household vinegar and after that, with acetone to remove any possible amine blush. Then I sanded using 220 grit (At the time I was afraid this may be too coarse, but it was perfect in practice) and applied two coats of pre-thinned gel coat with a roller.
Because the boat required new anti-slip tape I later (a couple of weeks later) applied IKEA anti-slip tape. A month or two after application, I removed a lot of that because it was eating through my harness and a guest cut his shins on the stuff climbing aboard. Although the tape was firmly stuck on by now, none of the gel coat came off with it, which surprised me as I was really expecting the worst. To be fair, not all the tape was over epoxied areas, but there were definitely some under there.
Last month I removed the rest of it to replace it with decent anti-slip tape. I had one littl espot where some gel coat let go, but only a tiny fragment actually broke free (approx. 1cm x 1mm), which was excellent considering I had to use a knife to get the tape off and pulled as hard as the tape would let me without it breaking.
The above experiences lead me to believe the issues that gel coat may have when applied over epoxy are probably due to incomplete cure or differences in prep work. OTOH, there is a lot of variation from one brand of epoxy, or even gel coat to another and even more variation in circumstances (temperature, humidity etc).[/quote]
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