Prepping and Painting advice please?

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After looking at Star's BlueWater yesterday it looks like someone just did not take the time to do the close up, time consuming paint work, other than that I thought the boat looked great.
 
Capt Jack said:
Woody Wax is the product. I used it on my center console fishing boat and it works great. Easy to apply and relatively inexpensive. Helps to prevent staining from fish/bait/bird dropping splatter as well as not slippery when dry. I have not put it on the trawler deck yet but plan to.

I have no interest in the product just a satisfied user. YMMV

John
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I have used it on my sailboat, but not my new boat yet (spent more time enjoying it than washing it). Woody Wax does do a nice job but need to be reapplied frequently. It isn't all that hard to apply however and as John mentioned not that expensive. After washing the non-skid, you spray the wax on, work it in with a boat brush, then after a bit hose it off.
 
Sam said:
The heat gun worked best for us. Sanding would not have worked, too thick of coats. Our boat did have two previous coats of paint on it. I'm uncertain if the paint was a two part epoxy or single stage paint. Either way, It was relatively fast and somewhat rewarding. Cheri was in front of me and heated an area up and I scraped with a quality putty knife/scraper. She would back up and I would move forward. Also suggest knee pads for both and leather gloves for the person scraping. Best of fortune and blessings
to you in this endeavor.
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Hubby bought me a heat gun and that's working well. Tedious and time consuming but it works. There are some areas that sanding seems to do better.
I think I'm going to be at this a while...:banghead:
 

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Sam said:
Star,
Please keep us informed of your progress. As you can see, Cheri and I now have the entire decks scraped. It took a week of evenings to do. We found that the warmer the weather, the easier the scraping is with the heat gun. Also, "there is no economy in buying cheap paint". I am curious to find what you use for paint. Epoxy paint (two part/w catalyst) will be a harder finish and arguably last longer, but more difficult to apply. But, given the amount of work the job entails in the first place, we don't want to ever do it again. Have a safe weekend. - sam
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It would be so much easier if I had large areas to work with. The majority of the decks all over the whole boat are molded non skid which has very little non skidding capability left..those areas we're going to do with some sort of non skid. The parts I'm working to remove paint from are all of the smooth surfaces which isn't all that much....basically all the borders of the molded non skid. These small areas are harder and more time consuming.

Hubby removed the back railings from the upper extended deck/cockpit cover where there was water intrusion and has been filling it with epoxy. Yeah we know the proper way would have been to cut into it and dig the rot out but we didn't want to do that. I would have just had a new hard cover made before doing all of that. If this method works for a few years we'll be happy.

Also, the swim step is in pretty bad shape and we've decided we're just going to replace it when we have it hauled out.

Anyway, we're still having fun and still loving our big money pit...lol
 
Swim Platform; is it cored fiberglass? If so you can take it off the boat, turn it upside down and cut (shallow) to remove the core without destroying the top surface. core removed you can lay up foam, glass cloth and resin (tape over holes)and have a rebuilt swim platform that only needs new bolts/machine screws and holes drilled where you can see the old ones.

I would volunteer for this before doing the stripping job.
 
kartracer said:
After looking at Star's BlueWater yesterday it looks like someone just did not take the time to do the close up, time consuming paint work, other than that I thought the boat looked great.
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Thanks! Hopefully I won't screw it up too badly. Lol
 
bilge53 said:
Swim Platform; is it cored fiberglass? If so you can take it off the boat, turn it upside down and cut (shallow) to remove the core without destroying the top surface. core removed you can lay up foam, glass cloth and resin (tape over holes)and have a rebuilt swim platform that only needs new bolts/machine screws and holes drilled where you can see the old ones.

I would volunteer for this before doing the stripping job.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure but I suspect so. It's really ugly but we'll inspect it further when we haul the boat out later in the year. I know that hubby climbed up on it the other day and didn't much trust it...I think he may have been talking about the mounts.
 
Ok another paint question....do I need to really get off every bit of paint because so far that's what I'm doing...making sure that every bit of it is off.
Someone at the marina told me I really didn't need to get that meticulous about it...that I needed to get all the areas where it's peeling but in the places where the paint is adhered really well that I just needed to sand down and get a smooth surface.
 
Here is some follow up on our decks. Big job but now finished. I also included a pic of the rubber wheel used on a drill to remove stickers and such.

We used a ppg epoxy. Same epoxy as used on bridges and oil rigs. Worked wonderfully. These were instructions given me by a boat builder.

1. Prepare surface and sand with 100 grit sandpaper. Use orbital sander.

2. Wipe with wax and grease remover or actions.

3. Tape surface to be textured with green scotch tape. Use 3/4 inch tape as you will be able to contour around tight bends. Use thin 3m contour tape for tight radiuses and put scotch tape on top of 3m tape to secure better.

4. Mix equal parts Amerlock lock cure (catalist) and Amerlock white resin (paint). Have paint store mix whatever color you want into the white resin. Add 10% ppg t10 reducer. Not prescribed T65. Mix well. Roll on with roller 9" made for epoxy.. I also used smaller roller and a brush. for tight places Do not use regular roller as the epoxy will melt it. All of this can be purchased at marine shops or some at Automitive paint stores. Paint in small sections. Make paint even with no high spots.

5. Take coffee can and drill 1/4" holes throughout bottom. Fill with 30 mesh sand. (Two 50 bags will do). You can get this at sandblast shops or perhaps even at homedepot or lowes? Sprinkle sand liberally over painted surface as you paint. Let dry overnight

6. Sweep, blow, vacuumed all excess sand off deck. Repaint again. Let dry

7. Day 3. Pull tape off at right angle to work. It's looking very good now. Retape an inch to each side
of painted surface. Then repaint all again as prescribed above for a third and final time. This retaping will give you a nice boarder and will prevent edges from chipping in the future.

7. Day 4. Using small brush, repaint only 1" edges to cover nicely

8. Day 5. Pull tape and enjoy a drink. Your finished. If you have any questions. Call me 360-600-2202.

9. It is suggested that you use a resperator. I did not as I did not spray and atomize paint, but rolled it. I also used a slight wind to my advantage.
 

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Ill send pics of finished product when I get to the boat this weekend.
 
Star0210 said:
Ok another paint question....do I need to really get off every bit of paint because so far that's what I'm doing...making sure that every bit of it is off.
Someone at the marina told me I really didn't need to get that meticulous about it...that I needed to get all the areas where it's peeling but in the places where the paint is adhered really well that I just needed to sand down and get a smooth surface.
Click to expand...

You just need to get a smooth surface that will hold a feathered edge.
 
Sam said:
Here is some follow up on our decks. Big job but now finished. I also included a pic of the rubber wheel used on a drill to remove stickers and such.

We used a ppg epoxy. Same epoxy as used on bridges and oil rigs. Worked wonderfully. These were instructions given me by a boat builder.

1. Prepare surface and sand with 100 grit sandpaper. Use orbital sander.

2. Wipe with wax and grease remover or actions.

3. Tape surface to be textured with green scotch tape. Use 3/4 inch tape as you will be able to contour around tight bends. Use thin 3m contour tape for tight radiuses and put scotch tape on top of 3m tape to secure better.

4. Mix equal parts Amerlock lock cure (catalist) and Amerlock white resin (paint). Have paint store mix whatever color you want into the white resin. Add 10% ppg t10 reducer. Not prescribed T65. Mix well. Roll on with roller 9" made for epoxy.. I also used smaller roller and a brush. for tight places Do not use regular roller as the epoxy will melt it. All of this can be purchased at marine shops or some at Automitive paint stores. Paint in small sections. Make paint even with no high spots.

5. Take coffee can and drill 1/4" holes throughout bottom. Fill with 30 mesh sand. (Two 50 bags will do). You can get this at sandblast shops or perhaps even at homedepot or lowes? Sprinkle sand liberally over painted surface as you paint. Let dry overnight

6. Sweep, blow, vacuumed all excess sand off deck. Repaint again. Let dry

7. Day 3. Pull tape off at right angle to work. It's looking very good now. Retape an inch to each side
of painted surface. Then repaint all again as prescribed above for a third and final time. This retaping will give you a nice boarder and will prevent edges from chipping in the future.

7. Day 4. Using small brush, repaint only 1" edges to cover nicely

8. Day 5. Pull tape and enjoy a drink. Your finished. If you have any questions. Call me 360-600-2202.

9. It is suggested that you use a resperator. I did not as I did not spray and atomize paint, but rolled it. I also used a slight wind to my advantage.
Click to expand...

Wow...you're done already!! I'd love to see pictures.

It's so danged hot here we really can't work for long periods of time. Today every couple of hours I'd get off the boat and just hose myself down head to toe just to cool off.
The hardtop cockpit cover is nice and hard now...no more soft spots. I've got all of the upper deck smooth areas sanded and the back side of the flybridge. Tomorrow I will work on the sides and front of the flybridge. As I said before, some areas the heat gun works really well and others my palm sander works better.
For as much as I've been working on it, there's still a WHOLE lot of boat left to do. *sigh*
 
Puzzled by your choice of paint. Lots of LP's like Awlgrip out there that are designed for your marine application. My experience with epoxy paints is that they chalk and do not like sun. So I googled Amerlock, reading the Product Data Sheet they state that the paint will chalk and fade in sunlight and that light colors will amber over time. Also been my experience with epoxy paints like Amerlock is that they're intended as an industrial coating, cosmetics aren't the highest priority so they don't flow out as well as LP. It's also a semi-gloss.
 
Hubby bought me a new toy yesterday....a Mikita orbital variable speed sander. Wow...it's my new favorite toy. Not sure why we didn't get one before we started this...duh!
It's going so much faster now. Got a lot accomplished this weekend.
 
Here are some pics. Very pleased. With all of the prep work necessary, I'm very glad we used an epoxy.
 

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Sam said:
We used a ppg epoxy. Same epoxy as used on bridges and oil rigs. Worked wonderfully. These were instructions given me by a boat builder.
Click to expand...

Good stuff, been using it for years myself. :thumb:
 
Aquabelle said:
$11k is an absolute bargain.
Click to expand...
Probably is in the land of crazy wages and even crazier house prices (Oztralia) but I reckon in a land with a $10/hour or less minimum wage and cheap housing (USA) it may be a lot.
 
So update on my progress.
It's sllooowwwww.
I'm going to be at this for a while!
What I've found that works the best for removing the old paint is a razor blade.
I'm literally scraping off paint in sheets. Comes off sooo easy in places where there was no sanding done to prep for the paint. The gelcoat under in these places is smooth and shiny. Mostly in areas that were somewhat protected like in the cockpit.
Places where they had made repairs and whatnot, the razor blade doesn't work so great.
Corners are a pain in the butt.

Still having fun though. I work on it when time allows.

Also, I don't think the PO even washed the boat before he slapped the paint on. It's filthy under the paint.
:banghead:
 
Sam said:
Here are some pics. Very pleased. With all of the prep work necessary, I'm very glad we used an epoxy.
Click to expand...


That looks GREAT!!
 
I did indeed feel your pain. You will all of a sudden realize "it is done". Keep up the good work!
 
Star0210 said:
So update on my progress.
It's sllooowwwww.
I'm going to be at this for a while!
What I've found that works the best for removing the old paint is a razor blade.
I'm literally scraping off paint in sheets. Comes off sooo easy in places where there was no sanding done to prep for the paint. The gelcoat under in these places is smooth and shiny. Mostly in areas that were somewhat protected like in the cockpit.
Places where they had made repairs and whatnot, the razor blade doesn't work so great.
Corners are a pain in the butt.

Still having fun though. I work on it when time allows.

Also, I don't think the PO even washed the boat before he slapped the paint on. It's filthy under the paint.
:banghead:
Click to expand...


Be sure to wash all the areas you are going to paint with Dawn or degreaser before you sand, and after for that matter, before you start priming.

Also wipe the surface done before priming with a primer compatible solvent as well. Follow that with a solvent wipe down before applying the paint as well.

Use only clean lint free rags. And change rags often.

I prefer microfiber cloths personally.
 
Capt.Bill11 said:
Be sure to wash all the areas you are going to paint with Dawn or degreaser before you sand, and after for that matter, before you start priming.

Also wipe the surface done before priming with a primer compatible solvent as well. Follow that with a solvent wipe down before applying the paint as well.

Use only clean lint free rags. And change rags often.

I prefer microfiber cloths personally.
Click to expand...

Do you think Simple Green works well? I have a gallon of that stuff sitting around.
I sure I'm going to be washing and re-washing and then washing some more.
I have a giant pack of microfiber cloths as well. Glad you mentioned that because I'd forgotten we had them.
 
Greetings,
Mr. 11 is spot on. Wash with detergent AND then wipe with solvent. Soap or detergent WILL leave a residue that might interfere with primer adhesion no matter how well you think you've rinsed.
 
RT Firefly said:
Greetings,
Mr. 11 is spot on. Wash with detergent AND then wipe with solvent. Soap or detergent WILL leave a residue that might interfere with primer adhesion no matter how well you think you've rinsed.
Click to expand...


Got it!

Scrape paint
Degrease/clean
Sand
Degrease/clean again
Wipe down with solvent

Is there any way to actually tell if the surface is clean enough or free of any yep of residue or oils/grease ?
 
We use Interlux or Total Boat paint . We always use the Interlux 202 solvent wash right before priming or painting .
 
Greetings,
Ms. S. Gotcha! What don't have a mass spectrometer handy? All you can do, really, is wash then solvent (as described by Mr. 11) while trying to "treat" all areas you will be painting. Chances are you'll be just fine. Prep is 90%-95% of a good paint job. Almost anyone can paint...

giphy.gif
 
Pack Mule said:
We use Interlux or Total Boat paint . We always use the Interlux 202 solvent wash right before priming or painting .
Click to expand...

We do too.
This post is to thank you for the tip on washing the to be painted surface. You want something that will disolve most things. You want something that will dry fairly quickly and won't harm the material painted or the paint already there. A very important part of the painting operation.
 
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