Gelcoat is plenty thick, so....
At least when the boat is pretty new the gelcoat is much thicker than paint and VERY soft and so easily buffed and polished. You have two approaches (not mutually exlusive). You can take down the surrounding area to the depth of the scratches, and then make lots of VERY fine scratches (compounding, then polishing), or fill in the scratches. Very deep ones you fill with color matched gelcoat, less depp ones you fill with wax, Regular wax is very thin so you will need it pretty smooth first. Our SB SUperwax is much thicker and tends to fill easier. THe only time you need wet sanding is when you need ot take off rough areas like overspray or when the outer layer of gelcoat is faded and you need to get EVENLY down to the true color. You will still need to some compounding and polishing (then waxing), but in general I would avoid wet sanding like the plague! Hope that this is of some help Jim W PS This approach applies only to GELCOAT , not paint or LPU that is generall much thinner. In those cases, abrasives should be used with great care.
