: Regardless of the type of paint it will likely be removed by one of the
: commercial strippers. Unfortunately, such a stripper may start disolving
: the kayak as well. Testing an area would be one approach. A second
: approach would just be to sand until fair and a stable surface remains. It
: may be that there is more than one layer of paint and that the paints are
: of different sorts. Flat black paint sound like it was added by a later
: user... likely an solvent based alkyd semigloss enamel directly off the
: hardware shelves.

: At this age, the fiberglass is probably held together with polyester, not
: expoxy. You may want to consider how much work it is worth. In the end, I
: believe you will end up needing to paint it again when finished removing
: part of the finish anyway.

: Hope this helps.

Hi Rick.
Thanks for the response. The black kayak is made of polyester. It cost me $50 A which is about $25 US so I dont want to spend much on it. The hull is coated in white gel coat under the black paint and I intend to sand off the black stuff and touch up the gelcoat with a white polyester flow coat which is cheap but effective. The deck coating is a mystery box but if I could find out what the black paint was I would probably get some more of the same in a nicer colour and put it over the black. Putting different kinds of paints over each other can be disasterous. Is there any way to find out if it is an alkyd based paint ? Any ideas would be appreciated. I really dont want to put a paint stripper onto it.
Thanks, Brian White.