Gelcoat Chippin'

The gelcoat is finally off and was hauled to the dump today as a matter of fact. We didn't remove the gelcoat from the underwing (last photo), but it's off all other areas except for the forward beam, where it seems to be stuck quite well.
Was it a good idea to strip the gelcoat? It seemed like a good idea at the time. It was coming off easily in areas and I couldn't see patching in areas with epoxy only to have it start coming off somewhere else. The reality is that the gelcoat was adhered reasonably well in most areas and very well in others. Of course, there were some areas where it just fell off, but the final tally was only 70 lbs of gelcoat removed. Considering the work involved, 70 pounds doesn't seem like much. When I say work involved, I'm only halfway there, as the the boat still needs to be faired and painted.

Gelcoat removal never would have happened without a little help from my friends. Alex Spear got it all started just by stopping by for an hour or so every few days.

We quickly learned that warming the area with a heat gun set on low really helped. I bought 3 heat guns.

There may be a miracle method for removing gelcoat, but I don't know what it is. We used sharp chisels and heat. All of the chisels got noticeably shorter from sharpening, even my high grade Japanese chisels.

I think this means ours is the 9th G-32, even though the sail number is 10.

I have a gimpy wrist, so I added a very long handle to my favorite chisel so I could use both hands.

The heat gun is strapped to my forearm with an elastic bandage.
There's a foam pad in there to angle the gun up and just the right number of wraps this way and that to aim it in the right direction.
Most of the large areas came off with this goofy set-up.

The gelcoat stuck well to the copper/epoxy near the waterline.
I chipped from above to get down to the waterline. Pushing back and forth on the handle gave a slow controlled pace until the chisel stopped at the copper/epoxy edge.

Chuck Hosmer just chipped off the very last piece of gelcoat, that's why he looks so happy.

Chuck bought this G-32 new in 1992 and has taken good care of it until I bought it last year.
















This is what 70 pounds of gelcoat chips looks like. Did we catch all of it? No, this stuff really flies when it chips off. All of the shop shelves have gelcoat chips on them, even using plastic curtains. I'm sure that some of the kits we have shipped had a chip or two in them.
At least we didn't have to grind the stuff off. No Dust is good dust.

The remaining gelcoat can be seen below. It's an area about 12 feet long x 7 feet wide. It isn't stuck particularly well there, it's just hard to get at because my ceiling is so low.

The dolly I have been using to move the boat around the shop can be seen here. The cross-pieces are made from very strong Fir 2x10's with 600 pound casters set inboard of the hulls so that the flexing of the 2x10 make up for the uneven floor (to keep from wracking the boat).

The long fore & aft blocks spread out the load on the hulls and are placed where the watertight bulkheads are located. When jacking the boat up or down, the whole assembly is tied to the hulls to keep it from moving (see next photo).

I have been lifting the boat up and down with a screw jack from my truck (that's what the yellow cordless drill is attached to).  Lifting on center means that the boat can be blocked up relaxed (not twisted), but the underwing at the fwd end is not supported, so I use a long padded 2x10 to spread the load.