: I have never worked with gelcoat, but I can tell you from
: automotive finishes, commercial marine finishes, and restoring
: plastics, I am quite lazy. If the scratch/defect is deep at all
: I would prefer to do a few strokes with 400 or 600 than scrub
: away with 800 and not be sure I'm making headway. Also, as you
: say, I stop at 1500, because the compound I use combined with a
: wool pad makes short work of it, so 2000 is just unnecessary
: work.

: My main concern in posting this is whether gelcoat is too soft or
: too thin to wet sand aggressively.

: m

I usually start with a few strokes with the 800 and if I feel it needs more then down to 600 I go without hesitation or even 400.
To answer your question is gelcoat is quite hard and can certainly be aggressively tamed. As far as thickness goes take a look at the hatch cutouts or the deckline mounting points to get an idea of mil thickness. Mil thickness on a kayak is usually between 18-24 mils. Decks always seem to be sprayed thicker than hulls ( hulls seem to be on the lower end more like 15-18 mils ), I believe this is because of the colors of decks needing more mil thickness to compensate for the seemingly week pigments used in these bright colors.

Hope this helps.

Dave g