I had an interesting experience trying to improve the appearance of the faded finish (which started off red and had faded to a dark pink) and numerous fiberglass scratches in my 15 year old fiberglass kayak (not the same as a paddle, but at least they're both glass). I tried a variety of waxes, cleaners, polishes, "swirl remover", rubbing compound, etc, although most of these were intended for car finishes. Some would seem to fill in the scratches and improve the appearance for a while, but nothing seemed to last. Worse, some of these eventually seemed to produce a cloudy haze after a while. "Then one day" (<-- these kind of passages always seem to include that phrase) I was adding an marine oil finish (intended for finishing wood trim on boats) to the wooden compass mount I made for my kayak and a little accidentally got onto the fiberglass. I quickly rubbed it off and noticed the depth of the color looked much better and the scratches looked less noticeable! So I tried a little more in an inconspicuous area and then checked it the next day in case it was going to damage the finish. Everything seemed fine. So I applied it to the whole kayak. Not exactly a miraculous, but a very noticeable improvement and it didn't eventually haze over. Evan Dallas Woodinville, Washington *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Jan 18 2005 - 11:17:22 PST
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