I have a nice star crack in my nosecone. Can anyone let me know how to repair it? I seem to re-call that the gell coat has to be rubbed down completely?

TIA, Ian.

Hi Ian.

I assume that it is just a slight crack and not a hard impact smash.

When you get a crack in fibreglass the first thing you need to do is to stop it spreading any further.
In order to do this you must firstly drill the very end of each crack with a fine drill bit so that effectively the crack has a rounded end. Don't go over the top on drill size, just use one that is just big enough. Once all the holes are drilled you should then tape up the outer side, or face side with masking tape and, from the inside of the panel, fill the holes with resin. Once the resin has set you can peel back the tape and you are left with a nice solid panel again.

Once the crack has been stabilised you can then carefully channel out the gel coat along the crack line. For this I like to use a dremel type tool with a slim filing bit. Dont go mad and remove lots of material because all you are doing is making a space for new gel coat to be brushed along the line to bond the two sides of the crack back together. When you have filled the cracks sufficiently and allowed the gel to set, you can then rub down the repaired area and spray it to colour.

Hope this helps.

Dave

Or if you have a gelcoat finish and want to leave it that way, rub down the painted on gelcoat (of the right colour) with 800 grit sandpaper used wet, and polish back to shine with T cut.

The above might work for a while but for a really proper repair more needs doing, it's the old adage about getting out what you put in.

See:-http://www.gibbs111.fsnet.co.uk/grp.htm

under GRP repairs.

Cheers

Chris

Nice one Mr G, I'm following your instructions re:repairing my gel-coat cracked cycle wings. Di it right first time and you only have to do it once!

Thanks guys.