Fiberglass Boat Buffing and Polishing with EZ Buff

Skipper January 26, 2016 Ask The Skipper

Boat Detailing with EZ Buff Buffing Compound.

How to Restore and polish faded, chalky, gelcoat to like new in one-step with EZ Buff.

EZ Buff is a one-step buffing cream and polish. It’s designed for the inexperienced novice, as well as the professional, to quickly and easily remove oxidation, chalk, light scratches, swirl marks and restore your boats gelcoat back to its original smooth, mirror finish, all in one step. When used as directed, in conjunction with EZ Buff Extender,it eliminates swirl marks and burn through. It contains LUMIGLOW™ to enhance color, making your white gelcoat whiter and your dark colors deeper and richer. Best results are obtained with a rotary buffer and clean wool pad. It’s One Step technology saves your time and money.

In this episode we’re going to show you how we taught a novice how toBuff the Gelcoat back to its shiny new appearance, using New EZ Buff, EZ Buff Extender and a Rotary Buffer with a Wool Pad. The boat that we selected for this demonstration is 27 years old and normally would be considered too old and too deteriorated to be a candidate for restoration. The dark red is also one of the toughest colors to restore, next to black, so this will be a real test for EZ Buff. To make it even more challenging, we’re going to teach a rookie how to buff and restore the gelcoat on this boat.

In the previous episodes we showed you how we first determined if we could restore this boat and what products we needed and how much, cleaned the pollutants from the surface so we didn’t grind them into the pores of the gelcoat, wet sanded the imperfections left by decal removal, removed the heavy oxidation, water stains and scuffs from the gelcoat and masked off the colored gelcoat so that we didn’t transfer the colors during the buffing process.

There was vinyl tape separating the different colors so we didn’t have to be too careful with the masking tape, as long as the adjacent color was masked off. We also masked off the cleaned teak strips on the deck to prevent the EZ Buff from contaminating the wood.

The vinyl tape striping was not in good shape and the boat owner wanted to replace the tape anyway, so we didn’t have to be too careful with that either. Normally, when buffing, you would either protect tape and decals or be careful that you didn’t contact it with the buffing wheel.The buffing action can grab the edges and tear the tape. Typically buffing around tape and decals as well as other fittings needs to be done by hand.

EZ Buff is a new and unique product. It’s a One-Step, water based buffing compound and polish not a typical rubbing compound. Because it’s water based, it’s environment friendly and it doesn’t leave behind the oily or waxy residue that traditional rubbing compounds do. When you get through, there’s no need for decontaminating the surface. You can go straight to the final UV protective polish. The One-Step formula eliminates wet sanding, buffing with coarse, medium and then fine compounds and polishing. EZ Buff does it all in One-Step, all at the same time. This will save you a lot of time and money.

Gelcoat buffing and refinishing with traditional rubbing compounds is best left to professionals with many years of experience. It takes a fine touch and feel to get it right and that only comes with a lot of practice, something you won’t get on your first boat.

EZ Buff was invented for the inexperienced rookie. If you follow the instructions, you’ll get professional results the first time.

When buffing, it’s important to keep the surface wet and lubricated at all times to prevent swirl marks and burn through. EZ Buff has built in lubricants to minimize these potential problems but we’re also going to use EZ Buff Extender to extend the working time and keep the surface and the buffing pad well lubricated to completely eliminate swirls and burn through.

We’re going to buff the white gelcoat first and then mask that off and do the maroon color next. Before we start, we’re also going to wrap the vinyl sun pad at the back to protect that.

I like to use a brush to apply the EZ Buff so I’m pouring some into a container. Next I apply it to the surface. I prime the wool pad with some EZ Buff extender and some EZ Buff on top of that. Next I spray some EZ Buff Extender onto the work surface. Keep the electrical cord out of the way by putting it over your shoulder. Start the buffer and adjust the speed to medium so that you get good buffing action while still being able to control the machine.

You need to keep the pad as flat as possible. When done correctly, the back half of the pad will be in contact with the work surface. You need to drag or pull the machine back and forth and up and down in an overlapping S pattern, lifting the font edge slightly so the back half will remain in contact with the surface and the front will be free to rotate…

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