: "Need a small quantity of British racing green gel coat for a
: deck repair on my Pintail. Any ideas?"

: Dave, if you don't want to buy gelcoat you can use epoxy thickened
: with colloidal silica then tinted with resin coloring agents.

:
: http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?productId=111748&catalogId=10001&langId=-1&storeId=11151&storeNum=50218&subdeptNum=50219&classNum=50222

: As suggested by Gerry, just mix blue and yellow pigments until it
: matches your British racing green Pintail deck. I put wax paper
: on top of the thickened and tinted epoxy repair and if lucky
: very little, if any, sanding is required. Good luck on making
: your vintage Pintail look great again.

: Ron

There is the potential of incompatibility issues when epoxy and polyester resins are in contact with each other. I once got into this when attempting to repair a Wenonah canoe. The epoxy and fiberglass patches cured on the original polyester resin, but then gel coat wouldn't cure on the epoxy repair. Had to have a more knowledgeable friend bridge the two incompatible products with some vinylester resin painted on the epoxy patch before adding the gel coat layer.

There are a lot of different resins used in boat construction (just learned that a 1994 Mariner kayak was made with a 50:50 polyester and vinylester mix). Sometimes different resins are compatible and sometimes not, and its hard to know in advance. (A smarter person would have done a test patch). While I prefer epoxy as a product, my advice is to avoid potential incompatibility by using gel coat (polyester) on the polyester kayak.

Dave`