Topsides: aplying Interlux Perfection

We sprayed on three coats of interlux epoxy primer and sanded it down with 220 grit paper to get the topsides ready for the application of the Perfection coating.  Jessie, Noah, and Jared did the bulk of the hand sanding and a good deal of the DA work as well. After the sanding was completed we spent a couple hours vacuuming the boat, the shop, and every surface we could to try and contain the dust. The following day we wiped the topsides as usual and followed it up with a final wipe with tack cloths just prior to painting.

We mixed up a batch of the paint base with the catalyst and let it sit for the twenty minute induction time while we got our painting supplies ready.

We started at the bow and applied the product as directed on the can using the rolling and tipping method; one person applying the product by rolling out a small area with a foam roller and a second person following behind and using the tip of a paintbrush to lightly brush the surface to remove the roller texture and little bubbles.

It went well but we did lay it on a little too thick at first and got a couple of runs in the finish and I was not completely satisfied with the results. In some areas the paint did not blend as it should have and when you look at it closely you can see brush strokes in the surface. It was a good trial run and we are going to sand it down with 220 and use it as a base coat and do it again in a few days after the paints hardened up well.

Next time we will thin it a little and try using a foam brush to tip it out with. I've had good success in the past using a foam brush for tipping, albeit not with a urethane paint. This is the first time I've personally applied urethane paint and am still getting the feel for it.

 We do a lot of bottom paints and fiberglass and gel-coat work in our shops but we avoid topside urathane or fine finishing coatings. Our two shops are located on a short dirt road and its impossible to keep the dust situation to a level that is acceptable for commercial workmanship of fine finishes. We did the best we could to mitigate against dust but some still found its way onto the finished surface. For the next round we will mist the floor, walls, and everything else we can with water prior to painting to try and hold the dust down a little better.

 

Paint dry but not perfect.

  

Shop reflecting in dried paint

Nonskid deck paint

The time has come to get some paint on the deck!

We vacuumed and wiped the nonskid areas, taped them off and wiped em once more with awlprep for good measure. We are using Kiwi Grip nonskid paint, a product I have never used before. I called the paint Rep to find out what undercoat primer I needed. I told him we had areas of bare fiberglass, epoxy, and gel coat, all sanded down good with eighty grit paper.

He laughed and said what we'd done was overkill and none of it requires a primer...... paint away! He went on to state that the stuff would stick to a cars windshield and if you left it on for a week you'd need a razor blade to get it off. 

I took the gallon can on deck, opened it up and was surprised to see what looked like a gallon of cream colored mayonnaise. I scooped some up with the paint stir stick and it clung to it even when I inverted the stick. No wonder they recommended spreading it on deck with a notched trowel! The directions tell you to work a couple square feet at a time so I started at the bow and placed several dollops of paint onto the deck and spread it with a notched trowel. Once I had it looking pretty evenly spread out I took thier special "loopy goopy" three inch roller and started rolling it out. The roller covering looks like the loose weave of an old style copper pot scrubbing pad. The concept is to roll over the area about four or five times which incorporates air into the loose weave of the roller then into the paint making paint bubbles. After the fourth or fifth rolling the bubbles burst and the paint forms little peaks, gravity takes over and the peaks fall and soften into the nonskid texture.

The rolling out procedure takes only a few minutes and the texture seems to level and even itself out very nicely. The paint has a working time of twenty five minutes and the rep said if you want a more aggressive texture then wait about twenty minutes or so and roll it out once more. It stands the peaks back up but this time they wont fall over. Be forewarned that after it cures for a couple months it gets harder and harder and we call the aggressive texture bloody knees nonskid cause that's what you'll get if you fall on it.

I liked the way the texture looked and decided to pass on the more aggressive "bloody knees" method.

I must say I am very impressed with the stuff. It hides imperfections like nothing I've ever seen before, they just disappear under this stuff and it levels itself nicely when you roll it out. Its a one part, one coat product and as long as you roll it out as directed and take the tape of the masked areas within a few minutes of rolling it out its the easiest product I've ever used on a boat. My only complaint would be that its perhaps a little too easy and with products like this people don't need shops like ours to put it on! All kidding aside.....I really wish we had more products like this; it goes on easy, looks good, and stays where you put it. Oh, and it blends right in if you have to roll on a little more the next day because you (cough) stuck yer finger in it when you peeled the tape off (cough).

 

  

  

 

Bulkheads: Thru-bolting

I was thinking about the bulkheads and the loads they might be subject to in a storm. They had several layers of cloth tying tying them to the hull but the bulkhead is made of plywood with the final ply being two millimeters thick. I could imagine that thin ply shearing from the rest under a severe load. The more I thought about it the more I felt I'd better "beef" em up. Drilling through the glass tabbing and thru-bolting seemed to be the logical thing to do, even if it wasn't necessary I'd sleep better at sea knowing it was done.

So it was I found myself scrunched in lockers with drill in hand, boring holes in the bulkheads.

The plan was I'd bore several holes along the bulkhead, vacuum up the dust, then push a 5/16" cap screw (bolt) through the bulkhead with some 5200 and a big fender washer on it. My helper  would place another big fender washer on his side of the bulkhead and then finish up with a nylock nut and tighten it down.

This procedure was going along very smoothly, after all I had built the interior so I knew were everything was and could just go along drilling without checking the other side of the bulkhead for wires, obstructions, etc.

Imagine my surprise when I drilled through the forward settee bulkhead, pulled back the drill, and out  poured a geyser of water! The look on my face must have been priceless, there were no tanks there and the water system was dry, having never been filled. How could there be water!  My helper took one look my expression and burst out laughing and yelled "shes taking on water! abandon ship!" as he dashed off the boat for some rags and a bucket.

I'd forgotten I had placed a row of one gallon water jugs in the locker to ensure they would fit and had neglected to remove them and drilled right into one. Fortunately we had made the locker water tight and sealed the wood so the water was contained and all we had to do was mop it up and run a fan on the bolt hole for a day to dry it out. The rest of the bulkheads were bolted without issues.....I looked before I drilled.

Lighting

After we hung the blue tarps it became noticeably darker in our space and the tarps cast a blue hue on the boat making it difficult to see when painting. We needed better lighting.

We had several duel tube eight foot florescent fixtures in the shop that were not in use so we rounded em up and put plugs on em and hung em around the boat. It lit the port side very well and half the starboard side. A trip to the hardware store for one more fixture and a couple of flood lights and we had the area well lit.

After that we taped off the new stripe to protect it and hung more plastic to protect the Hull from over spray.

Then we gave our work space a good cleanup and got organised. It was getting a little messy, we had a lot or hands doing a lot of sanding and masking and all sorts of debris was tossed over the side and wound up underfoot.

Boot Stripe

Things have been clicking along so nicely we've gotten ahead of our stock of supplies.

We are awaiting the arrival of more epoxy paint and the appropriate thinners for spraying.

We could proceed with finishing fairing in the hull & deck joint but decided that since we have the hull nicely cleaned and prepped we might as well get the boot stripe on the ol' girl. We mixed up some epoxy paint and brushed it along the waterline to build up a nice undercoat for the boot stripe. The next day it was sanded with 80 grit as recommended by the paint manufacturer and wiped down. I had been flip-flopping between red or gold for the boot and cove stripe, I liked both and couldn't make up my mind. Our painter said; "you know,...we've got some Pettit Vivid anti-fouling paint leftover from a job, plenty of red and plenty of white." Ohhhhh, red it is then! Pettit Vivid anti-fouling paint comes in nice bright colors and fetches a high dollar, getting some free paint definitely was the deciding factor on the color.....and I didn't even have to go dumpster diving for it  >:-P

We masked off the paint line with 3/4" 3M fine line tape and applied some 1-1/2" 3M 2080 over that to give us a little more room to over-brush without hitting the hull. (see previous post for measuring the boot stripe) Three coats of the Pettit Vivid White were applied with a foam roller, one each day with a light sanding between coats. After the final coat was nice and dry we masked over the bottom of the stripe with 3/4" 3M fine-line tape. We'd peel this off later to reveal the 3/4" white accent stripe.

The remaining stripe was lightly sanded and wiped down then two coats of Pettit Vivid Red was applied with a foam roller allowing four hours dry time between coats. Thirty minutes after the final coat was applied the tape was removed and voila, we had a stripe! Black hull, white accent stripe, red boot stripe, all in high quality anti-fouling paint.

 

  

 

Top Sides: applying two part epoxy primer.

We are waiting for supplies to arrive before we can continue with the cabin top so we moved on to the topsides for a few days.

There is multiple layers of fairing compound near the hull and deck joint. As each is a slightly different color it  created a camo pattern making it hard to visually see the fairness of the hull. It was a good time to apply a couple coats of two part epoxy paint so its a more uniform color. We sanded the hull with 220 grit as directed by the paint manufacturer and wiped it down. 

We purchased two rolls of pre-taped plastic from our local Lowes home improvement center. The roll is about a foot long with the tape attached along the edge for the entire 100 foot length of the roll. We applied the tape to the hull (to protect the bottom paint) unrolling it as we went. The thin plastic sheet was then opened making it two feet wide, then opened again for its full four foot width. I really like this stuff, it costs about eight bucks a roll and uses a good quality blue tape. It makes it very easy to protect the hull from drips and overspray.

We used the second roll on deck, adhering it to the top of the cap rail and opening it towards the center line of the vessel to protect the deck and cockpit.  Smaller sections were added as required to completely cover the deck. The plastic was left very slack along the starboard side deck so we could still use it as a walkway.

I applied one very thin coat of paint with the HVLP sprayer, thinning it as directed by the paint manufacturer.

I had done a little more practicing with the gun and had adjusted it to a finer mist than before and really focused on keeping the gun at a constant distance  from the hull. The nozzle can be adjusted so that the spray is narrow and vertical, narrow and horizontal, or adjusted anywhere between the two reducing the width and making it wider and into a circle. They suggested not using the circle unless required to get around objects.

The air hose supplied with the gun is twelve feet long so I worked along ten foot sections of the hull before pausing to relocate the air pump. The nozzle was set up for the narrow vertical pattern and I started at the deck making rows of passes fore and aft descending towards the waterline with each pass.

The nozzle was then adjusted to the narrow horizontal pattern and the area was covered again working from the bow aft in vertical rows until the ten foot section had a nice even coat, or so I hoped.

A pause to relocate the air pump and the process was repeated time and again until I had gone right around the boat. It would have been easier if the air pump had come equipped with a longer hose or if I had a helper to hold the pump and move with me as I worked.  Hmmm, perhaps I can mount it on wheels like a shop vac and pull it around, I'll have to give that some thought.

The next day the topsides were sanded and wiped and the process repeated and a second coat applied.

Now the fairing of the deck joint can be more easily seen and we can adjust it as required and then apply two more coats of epoxy paint.

 

Deck tented

Painting on Deck

Once the second coat of epoxy primer on the cabin and deck was cured we sanded it with 220 grit production paper. The surface was cleaned and we applied a thin coat of Pettit easypoxy semigloss white. Its very important to apply this paint in very thin coats. If applied to thickly the paint film will never fully harden and will result in a permanent soft paint film.

The next day it was sanded with 220 grit paper and wiped down.

I was not entirely happy with the results we obtained by applying the paint by brush so I headed out shopping for an HVLP paint sprayer. We have high pressure sprayers at the shop but with other boats in the shop I dare not risk damaging them with overspray. HVLP stand's for High Volume Low Pressure. The low pressure greatly reduces the amount of overspray. I bought an Earlex 3000 HVLP system, it had gotten rave reviews online and was reasonably priced. We erected two huge blue tarps in the shop from floor to ceiling on the outside of the wall surrounding my boat. I had never used an HVLP gun and was taking no chances with the overspray. I practiced with the gun on some large pieces of cardboard and was very pleased with the simplicity of the gun. Its very easy to adjust and there was very little overspray, the tarps were unnecessary. 

If you would like large sheets of thin, firm, clean cardboard for making mock-ups, templates, and rolling out fiberglass on; Head for your nearest Costco store and then go to the pallets of paper towel and toilet paper. The paper products have these lovely sheets of cardboard separating the levels. There are two types of sheets, one is a better quality so be sure you become familiar with both so you get the good ones. They usually have stacks of em not far from the paper products and if you ask they will give you as many as you want for free. Don't say "I'll take all you have" unless you've come in an empty moving van! I said that the first time and the fellow chuckled as he led me to a stack that would have filled my pickup truck box a good two or three times. You can have it all, he said with a smirk.

The boat was papered and masked and I sprayed a coat of paint onto the cabin and areas of the deck that won't be nonskid. The paint job went OK, but I still have a little more practicing to do before I will be happy with the results. The gun performed well, but I need a little more experience to lay the coat down evenly.

 

Hanging tarps

 masking off the deck (HVLP sprayer in foreground)

First pass with the HVLP sprayer