10yr Barnacle removal

It did make Bill, my engine guy, miserable. Does that count?

Like all good tools...the uses become limitless....

Have a diver clean it before hauling it. Once that stuff dries, it hardens and will be very difficult to remove without damaging the boat.

Well he ended up getting that little device called the Waveblade. What_Barnacles had posted a link for it. It's made in England I believe, when I first saw it I thought ok one more gimmicky device that will never work. I was wrong again. This thing is DC powered, a diver takes it over the side and works the hull. I was amazed, similar to that needle gun idea, and kept at the right angle it got all the barnacles and even removed many of the bases. I suppose because it was underwater it worked even better because the barnacles had no chance to "harden off". The thing costs about 300.00 and Jamestown Dist is where he picked it up. I'm sure there is a video on Youtube or somewhere out there. Entire hull was done in a day. He's gonna haul soon and do some touchup. If I'm around when he does I'll take some pics.

what_barnacles said:

waveblade

Click to expand...

How is WaveBlade different than the low cost multi-tools with a scrape blade, except that it runs off 12vdc and underwater?

It seems that a multi-tool would work better, since several reviews say that it stalls under pressure.

Insequent, tell me you didn't scrape a 50' hull with a chisel? I think I need a drink.

Final step was chisel, yes. But pressure washing was reasonably effective, a wide paint scraper then removed quite a lot of the barnacle bases. Chisel for the stubborn ones. I did spend all of one day on it. And decided I would not let it get so many on it again.....

stubones99 said:

How is WaveBlade different than the low cost multi-tools with a scrape blade, except that it runs off 12vdc and underwater?

It seems that a multi-tool would work better, since several reviews say that it stalls under pressure.

Click to expand...

well.... it runs off 12vdc and underwater. Those are 2 pretty big advantages. If you also have a hooka, you are all set.

Unfortunately when you scrape by hand, you have to ram the blade at the barnacles at ramming speed, and when it deflects off it can hurt. I used a hooka and spent the better part of the day scraping mine by hand. My hands were pretty shredded and my arms were toast.

The way I look at it, $300 lets me do it plenty of times anywhere I want or pay someone else to do it for me once. I've done it once by hand, I wont do it again.

Well I watched him hit the barnacles in about the first foot or two of water, it was a guys son who cleans bottoms for some of locals. You just hold it at the correct angle and slide it along, no ramming just let the tool do the work. Duty cycle is 30 sec on 10 sec off, the only complaint the kid had was he had to hold down the button rather than have it lock in the on position. Like I said I think by doing it under the water the barnacles don't harden, that's the only thing I can think of.