OK, I know you might not have even had a chance to build your first kayak yet and the last thing you probably want to think about is ever having to repair it. But, for some of us the time does come when we need to strip off some old fibreglass. I’ve personally had to do it with a cedarstrip canoe. When I did it I ended up using a belt sander, which worked better than I expected but it was still fairly time consuming. I had checked around for some other options but I hadn’t heard anything better at the time.
Since then I have heard more and more people recommending that you use a heat gun to strip the fibreglass in much the same way you would use it to remove old paint. After seeing this YouTube video, I’m convinced that the next time I need to strip some fibreglass I’ll be trying the heat gun approach.