Options on restoring gelcoat you can feel metal flake through

[Matt]

My boat's gel coat is faded to the point I can feel metal flake in places. What are my options? I'm pretty sure wet sanding is out as it would turn the metal flake silver. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Matt

[SKATER241]

MOST FLAKE BOATS WILL FEEL A LITTLE ROUGH.IF IN DOUBT PICK A SPOT OUT OF THE WAY AND TRY BUFFING IT FIRST.USE A HEAVY CUT COMPOUND AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS.UNLESS SOMEONE HAS WET SANDED YOUR BOAT HEAVILY IN THE PAST I DOUBT YOU ARE FEELING THE FLAKE ITSELF.IF THE BUFFING DOES NOT GIVE YOU THE DESIRED RESULT THEN TRY WET SANDING THAT SAME SPOT AND AGAIN SEE WHAT HAPPENS.

[Matt]

I've done a little compounding on it and I'm pretty sure I'm hitting some flake as I've turned some of it from burgundy to silver. It's never been wet sanded, but this is a Bullet bass boat that has spent a ton of time out on the water down here in severe Texas heat. It's only on the cap, the sides will compound out fine.

Matt

[Hydrasports205]

not much you can do with it once the flake is bleached silver

You probably can actually feel the flake...I've been around a couple of old rangers like that. There isn't much you can do once it gets to that point. Putting a new coat of clear on a flake boat will only make it look 10x worse than it does right now in about 6 months. The best thing to do would be to keep it covered/polished or get it painted. There's an old guy over here that did a custom job for me one of those old rangers. He ordered the ranger polyflake that matched the original color of the boat and layed down the flake mixed with a clear...guess there was a little more to it than that, but it came out great. He did it just on the cap where the flake was bleached and rough....