Glove it or coet-it?

[Williedrifter]

The finish on the bottom of my Willies has some basketball or larger patches of bare alluminum should I, replace the entire finish or fill in the bare spots? Any insight would be appreciated.

[FM2]

Hi Jay,
I was in the same position you are and decided to put a new coating on my DB. Seems the rivers have changed alot and if this winter is as dry as last year there will be many areas of exposed rocks.

I have used gluvit in the past but this year I am going to use coat-it. I like the idea of the Kevlar and graphite mixture. It's also a little less expensive.

Here is a thread about this that you might find informative.

http://www.ifish.net/cgi-local/ultim...c&f=1&t=005593

[ 10-19-2001: Message edited by: FM2 ]

[Catch 22]

I started over with a fresh new applicatin of coatit. The beauty of coat it is you can patch holes in glovit with it. Coat it's cheaper, slicker and super easy to work with. If your glovit is flaky at all, take it off. All of it. If it's just got some holes in it, you can feather it out with a sander and fill them in. I found out that you can use a heat torch to pull off the old coat if you need to go down to bare aluminum like I did. I, of course, found that out after I used an air chisel for over a week taking off the years of glovit on my koffler. By the way, you can't put glovit over coatit. That's what the people at fisherman's marine said anyway. Only coat it over glovit. So if you make the switch to coatit, that's what you have to use forever, unless you go back down to bare aluminum again. Good luck and have fun!!

I've had Coat-it on my DB for a few years now and like it a lot better than glove-it. The reason you can't use glove-t over coat-it is that it's real slick, It won't stick, like a rock.
We took a little sidding sander with rough paper and ground off the old stuff and this stuff painted on real well. Use a roller. The stuffs great.

[Paranoid]

Heres another angle. Several years ago I took my old 14' Hewscraft sled (that also doubled as a drift boat in low water conditions) down and had the bottom RHINO LINED. I had had some loose rivets and a seam was leaking prior to having the bottom done. I was having to re seal it almost every other year. The boat was done 7 years ago. Now I can run it up on the beach, pull it onto sharp rocks if needed, and even winch it up steep unimproved take outs and it still does not leak a drop. The coating absolutely bullet proof and flexible. With the help of a couple of friends I turned the boat upside down on the trailer and brought it in. They spray pickup truck beds twice. The first the first coat is a smooth base coat, the second is the texture coat. I did not want the texture due to the "drag in the water" factor, so they left it smooth like epoxy. They can spray it on as thick or as thin as you want. The results were truly amazing. I will never have to reseal this boat again and I continue to abuse the bottom. Check it out.

[SandySteel]

I removed the enitre layer of gloveit from the bottom of my Koffler driftboat a couple of years ago and I really like this stuff. It just doesn't get stuck!
A couple of warnings: When removing any two part epoxy make sure that you get a quality respirator and use it. This stuff is toxic when it is in dust form. And wash your clothes thoroughly or throw them away after you are done.
I used a small hand grinder with a sanding wheel to remove the Gloveit from the bottom of the boat and it worked really well to get back to bare aluminum.
Just be careful.
Eric