"I told you that paint was no good.."
Listen to the professional!!! I'm a professional marine painter.
I once did a varnish job. The owner made me use this old varnish that had been custom mixed for him years ago. I told him several times that it was too old and we needed new varnish. He didn't listen. I used the old varnish. It turned out horrible. He was mad at me!!! I told him it wouldn't work and then when it didn't work, he was angry at me!!! Lesson learned, now I stand by my guns even if it pisses the owner off and I lose the job, but all my work turns out beautiful.
I just did a beautiful awlgrip job on a 42' sailboat, you can see it at
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Here's the short...
If you ask 10 different professionals how to do an awlgrip job, your going to get 9 different answers. This is because Awlgrip hasn't published application instructions. The manuals specify equipment settings, have some general guidelines, and that's about it. So, find someone who has done it successfully and listen to them about EVERYTHING!!! You can't piece together instructions from several sources and make decisions yourself. If you haven't done it before, you don't know what your talking about, I don't care how much you have read or whom you have talked to.
That said, awlgrip is not that hard to apply properly once you know how to do it. It's just primer and paint, there's no magic skill a painter needs to apply awlgrip. If someone has done a good job before, they'll do a good job again. Try craigslist or ask around the boat community to find a local experienced professional. Awlgrip is all the rage right now, there are boat painters like me popping up all over the place whom can do it. You don't have to go to Canada for an awlgrip job.