I recently had my 260 rudder rebuilt due to a large split at the bottom seam. I put several pictures of this project on the Hunter small boat forum. While working on it I had the boat shop add three pounds of lead and a brass skid strip to the bottom. They then glassed the area and put a finish coat on that did not match the origional white under the blue bottom paint. (see photo) I decided to sand off the blue bottom paint as it was always rubbing off on my hands and I store my boat on its trailer at my house so I don't need bottom paint. No problem wet sanding off the bottom paint but as it came off I noticed many thin spots in the gel coat, especially at the leading and trailing edges. I was very careful not to sand too deep and cause the thin spots myself. Now I want to apply a new gel coat. I have purchased some West Marine gel coat, which hardens without a cover coating, and tried using a brush to apply. With only 10 minutes to hard finish it did not give the coat time to flow and I ended up with lots of brush marks. I then tried a sponge-brush which worked much better but still gave marks and a pretty thin coat. As I carefully wet sanded, by hand, with 400 grit I could see through the new gel coat. My question is how to get a thick enough coat on, in the SHORT curing time, to sand and not leave lots of brush marks. I don't really want to take the rudder back to the boat works as I want to learn how to do this right myself. I don't own a paint sprayer. Brigg
