non skid Painting question?

[yorklyn]

The factory non skid on my 10 meter resembles the dimples on a golf ball. I sanded it off the gunwales around the cockpit so they are now smooth. I will be using awlgrip with awl grip griptex in a coarse grip. I'm afraid to attempt sanding the bow down smooth in fear of creating an uneaven deck since its curved. The gunwales were flat so sanding 1/8 of gelcoat wasnt too bad.
My two options are to use fairing compound and fill all the nonskid before painting or simpley paint over it and hope the griptex no skid texture looks ok over the old dimpled nonskid.
Does anyone else have any experience with this?

[RWS]

might do a test patch...

RWS

[MarinaMike]

As long as you keep your sander flat, you should have no worries sanding the rounded deck. Keeping your sander moving constantly is the key, don't press too hard, let the sander do the work. Regardless, you will have to etch and clean the rounded deck one way or another before applying a new layer of non skid to it. Otherwise your product will eventually pop right off and leave you with chips coming up everywhere. Follow the same steps u did to your gunnels and you will be fine.

[Big D]

As long as you keep your sander flat, you should have no worries sanding the rounded deck. Keeping your sander moving constantly is the key, don't press too hard, let the sander do the work. Regardless, you will have to etch and clean the rounded deck one way or another before applying a new layer of non skid to it. Otherwise your product will eventually pop right off and leave you with chips coming up everywhere. Follow the same steps u did to your gunnels and you will be fine.

+1
If you don't sand the nooks and crannies of the current non-skid, the new coating will not adhere properly. The result after a couple of seasons will not be pretty. There'd be no guaranty that fairing would give you the result you're looking for as you'd still have to deal with sanding. Sand the non-skid as suggested above, just take your time and don't rush or you'll spend more time correcting mistakes.

You'll get a more even distribution of the griptex if you shake it from a container high off the surface. If you sprinkle too close to the surface, you'll get a patchy look. I find you get better results with multiple light passes parallel to each other rather than just one heavy application.