Waxing Glass Boats

What wax do you use for your glasses boat? Do you use a buffer on the boat?

I use starbrite marine polish. Wipe on the boat in a circle motion then when it drys wipe it off with a soft towel or hand buffer. I don’t use a electric one because it seems to easy to burn up your gel coat beside the soft towel works fine.

There is no one size fits all answer. You have to match the product to the condition of your boat and the gelcoat.

The rule of thumb is to use the minimal abrasive content that will produce the result you need. You then have to follow progressive steps and use the relevant product to produce the end result desired.

If you look at most brands of marine products, they have a progressive numbering depending on the level of oxidation that you need to remove.

Personally, I use a marine wax every year, and then I use a very light polishing compound/wax compound about every other year to restore the shine by removing oxidation.

I use an electric buffer. IMO, if you buy a quality variable-speed buffer and a good wool bonnet and set the speed at the minimum for the given operation, this is the best and fastest option.

Grouse

Consider foam pads instead of wool. Wool pads are very aggressive and on dark colors the chance of getting “swirls” in the paint is high. An aggressive foam pad with very light compound can do more than needed in 75% or more cases.

TripleA wrote:

Consider foam pads instead of wool. Wool pads are very aggressive and on dark colors the chance of getting “swirls” in the paint is high. An aggressive foam pad with very light compound can do more than needed in 75% or more cases.

I like the wool pad’s ability to get into tight spaces as the edge “flies” out from the buffer.

I think the key with any type of pad is proper speed control and matching the product and applicator to the application.

It’s important to note that a buffer is NOT a grinder. They look similar, but an angle grinder is WAY too high of a speed for buffing. I have a variable speed buffer that goes down to about 60 RPM for apply product and then can be infinitely dialed up from there for buffing/polishing.

I think a lot of guys want to shortcut the process by starting with too aggressive of an abrasive because they “don’t want to have to redo it”. Big mistake. Start with an out-of-sight area and test products to see what is the minimum abrasive compound needed to do the job, then proceed with the rest of the boat.

I can do a 21 footer in an hour per product. The benefit of keeping up on this maintenance is that the worst case scenario is I have to polish, then come back and wax. Most years it’s just wax or a combo light polish/wax that can be done in a single pass.

Grouse

I wax my boat once in the spring and that’s it. Then I use a liquid spray. Spray it on and whip it off. It takes about 5 minutes if you do it right after you get off the water.

I can’t remember the last time I had a free hour to wax my boat when there was open water. For me this is quick, leaves my boat looking great and I’ll actually do it.

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I have used Nu-Finish to wax everything for at least 28 years. Scary.
I use Wizard spray to touch things up and make them pretty fast.