Having been around since the 1930’s in a commercial sense, fibreglass has proved to be a very versatile material in the manufacture of various products.
People tend to immediately think of boats as being the number one product, but there are many, many other products available but at the end of the day it isn’t indestructible and depending on the way it is used it can break, but can cracked fibreglass be fixed?
The good news is that cracked fibreglass can be fixed, if you know how and that’s the basis of this very quick post, to give you the information needed to enable you to fix any cracked fibreglass you may have.
To begin with, most fibreglass is covered with gelcoat, it doesn’t have to be, but it generally is so you need to first remove that to get to the cracked fibreglass.
That entails grinding away the gelcoat, or whatever coating is covering it to see the severity of the cracking.
The next step depends on the original thickness of the fibreglass, a boat would be a lot thicker than a shower tray for example.
Let’s work on the basis of it being a shower tray and the underside is totally inaccessible. This means you’re going to have to repair the cracked fibreglass from one side only and being a shower tray it isn’t going to be over thick.
You need to be careful when grinding the cracked fibreglass away because you don’t want to go right through the laminate, you’re going to need to leave some behind in order to lay the new glass on.
You’re basically going to be taking away the cracked fibreglass and replacing it back to the same thickness as it originally was with new fibreglass mat.
Now, with the example of a shower tray the amount of glass mat will only be about 3 or 4 layers of 450g and once that has cured fully it will be good as new.
The same process goes for any type of cracked fibreglass and then it’s just a case of applying the finish, like gelcoat.
The one thing I’ve seen too many times is people being told that simply using a dremel type tool and routing out the cracks and filling with some filler and that would be enough.
It isn’t enough and the crack will just come back, I’ve seen it time and again, ever heard the expression ‘papering over the cracks’.
Hopefully this quick post has helped you understand how you can fix cracked fibreglass yourself, if there is something you’re not sure of then simply contact me here and I’ll be more than happy to give you any advice I can 👍