by angib » Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:36 am
Doug,
There's a secret trick to repairing epoxy boats with polyester gel coats, which is to skim a fresh (ie, one day old) epoxy repair with body filler before painting or spraying the new gel coat over the top. As these repairs have stayed stuck to the decks of racing boats, you can be fairly sure there isn't an adhesion problem, although the filler thickness is minimal.
But really, why not use epoxy? If you mix your own filler powders using a high proportion of ultralight filler, it's no harder than body filler to sand and you know the adhesion is as good as you can get. The only downside is waiting for the epoxy to cure hard before sanding - one area where body filler has it beat.
Andrew