Has anyone color matched our white gel coat to a Spectrum Color repair kit color? I know Bob said it is “Oyster White” a few months ago, but the Spectrum Color website lists 47 different “Oyster White” colors - matched to different boat manufacturers and year-eras. But not to Nonsuches.
I bought some Interlux toplac oyster white hoping for a good match. Nope!
RonB.
Yeah, that’s what I worry about. You can name a color pretty much anything you want. Maybe our color matches one of those 47 and maybe none of them would match. Spectrum might have a different name for our color of white. Worst case, they might not have it at all, though I bet they have something close enough for the little chips that I need to fill.
I’m wondering if you got to Spectrum from the BOAT/US ad that I saw. I completely lost hope of figuring out what would work. I’ve previously posted that MagicEzy’s Oyster White was a good match on my 1983 26C, but it hasn’t been good on my 1987 26U. I think I’m going to try their Cream to see if that works better.
Someone posted in 2011 that they’d had good luck with, “Evercoat Gel Coat Scratch Patch. Color is Buff White Beige. Number 105653. WWW.evercoat.com.” https://nonsuch.discourse.group/u/bob_forman
And there’s also this in 2022 from Paul Miller (Profile - system - The Nonsuch Community Forum):
-- Bob
If you’ve given up on gelcoat and are thinking of using a simple marine enamel this worked for me. My deck was old porous gelcoat that held dirt tenaciously. Cloverdale Paint matched a sample for me and it is just about perfect. I know this because there’s a bit of my cabin side that I missed and after two years no one has noticed. It looks great and is waaaay easier to clean.
The other thing to be aware of is that not all hulls were the same colour when they left the factory. My brother’s 26, hull 59 is a has very slight cream colour to it, My 26, hull number 68 is called Smoke White and is considerably different in colour compared to my brother’s boat. Paul Miller’s 30 had a slight blue/ green/grey tinge to it. I think Paul’s recommendation is correct, try matching what is there and don’t worry about manufacturer’s names. Mark
I’ve just got two or three very small gel coat chips. I will be hauling my boat later this year for bottom paint and I plan to have the thing buffed out and spiffed up at that time. If I can’t easily fill those chips with a gel coat patching kit, I’ll just wait and see if they can fix it in the yard. I really don’t want to start painting because, even if I get a perfect match, it will age differently and diverge.
I have a few little chips in my cockpit and bulkhead area. My question is are these chips just cosmetic or do they pose any water ingress to the core material?
My $0.015 (adjusted for inflation and advice quality) would be to get a couple different-colored MagicEzy cubes and see if one or a combination gives a decent match. My thinking is that’d be cheaper than Spectrum’s quantity, less time-consuming than paint matching, and close enough for most purposes.
-- Bob
Thanks, I’ll take a look at it. My past boats have either been cold-molded (painted), aluminum, or new, so I’ve never had to deal with gel coat issues before. I’m beginning to suspect that I don’t want to now, either.