Soda Blasting

Adam135 · **Joined:** 05 Feb 2009 22:21 **Posts:** 22

Just had the bottom soda blasted for anticipated blister repair and barrier coat in the spring. Work exposed hundreds of tiny blisters as I had expected. But also this peach color of the gelcoat which I have never seen before on an exposed bottom. Has anyone ever seen a color like this on exposed gelcoat?

Well can't attach the photo it says the board attachment quota has been reached???

Tortuga's Lie · **Joined:** 27 Oct 2006 10:32 **Posts:** 827

Adam,
I wonder if your peach color is really just bleed through from a red bottom paint. When I stripped my bottom years ago, I seem to recall a blue-ish tint. Does the peach color go all of the way through to the laminate or is it just in the gell coat?
Tom

Adam135 · **Joined:** 05 Feb 2009 22:21 **Posts:** 22

Tom, yea I guess that is possible, the last bottom paint was blue when I bought the boat but before that is an unknown. I'll try posting a pic again but it wasn't letting me before. I'm going to get some opinions from yard workers on that plus recommendations for blister repair since they are so widely spread. Did you have any blisters to deal with? It seems that some others have had the multiple small blister types on their hulls from other threads on here. I would be interested to hear any opinions since it seems to me with so many little ones that grinding them all out would be taking much of the gelcoat away.

T37Chef · **Posted:** 25 Oct 2009 19:33

Ah...the dreaded blister repair job. This was the first major project for me on our new to us T37. I didn't have the hue you refer but did have hundreds of superficial blisters and only about 6 that required grinding out, nothing into the core, not even close.

Let me know if you have any questions, in the meantime I posted this on SailNet: http://www.sailnet.com/forums/gear-main ... pairs.html

Velera · **Joined:** 29 Dec 2006 09:38 **Posts:** 656

I firmly support what T37chef did. With the same problem I had my bottom peeled and took off a layer of laminate. This was big time overkill. There was no migration of water into the core (my worry). Relaminating the hull may make me feel good about my boat's hull, but it was not worth it. T37 Chef did a really nice job and it is the right prescription.

Tortuga's Lie · **Joined:** 27 Oct 2006 10:32 **Posts:** 827

When I bought "Tortuga's Lie" about 15 years ago, she had hundred's (a thousand???) of jelly-bean sized gell coat blisters which I ground out, let dry, then applied the Interlux 1000/2000 barrier coat sytem. It has been well over a dozen years since I did this work and it seems to have done it's job with only one or two blisters showing up after all of this time. The blisters only appeared to be in the gell coat and not the laminate and no blister was larger than a nickel.

Good luck, Tom

Tartan37.com

Soda Blasting

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