BYYB Forums

Weekly update for 5/11/2015 through 5/17/2015:

Hours building:  4.5
Hours shopping:  2.75

Money spent:  $110.62
Varnish (got a 2-fer at West Marine), mineral spirits, tape, clamps, sandpaper, Agra-Grit.


The build has slowed down a bit due to needing to wait for the epoxy to fully cure prior to paint.  I waited two full weeks after the final epoxy coat.  This week was sanding and applying two coats of Interlux Pre-Koat topsides primer.  I used the roll and tip method, tipping with a foam brush.  I'd hoped that the brush strokes would flow flat but they didn't.  So I'm going to have to sand the primer smooth before I paint.  I might use a different type of tipping brush to see if that makes a difference.


Here's a photo of the first coat of primer:



One quart was enough for two coats with a bit left over for the rudder and for later touch-ups.

One annoyance is that seed fuzz is drifting in from nearby cottonwood trees.  Not too worried with the primer because it will be sanded anyway.  The top coat will be a different matter though.

I gave up on the tipping part.  I was never able to get the paint to flow flat and make the brush strokes disappear.  I have heard of some people who put their finger on the roller and drag it lightly over the paint to flatten the paint, but I have never gotten it to work with Rustoleum.  Now I roll on the paint and walk away.  The trick is to use a super smooth foam roller with ever so lightly thinned paint.  I also do my rolling at about 50 degrees F.  That way I don't have to worry too much about keeping a wet edge.  After I am satisfied That the paint is evenly rolled, I crank up the shop heater to 85 and close the door.  As the shop heats up, the paint flows just a bit more and then flashes off so that it doesn't tend to sag.  I don't have a professional looking spray job, but it is close enough to fool some people. 

I have found that finishing is just plain fussy and frustrating.  When I built the Duck, I did the best job I could which did not satisfy me at all, and just went sailing.  I kept monkeying around with finish work and when I thought I was skilled enough I took another shot.  I am still not as good as I should be, but I did learn how to sail a bit.  At the time I launched, I thought that it would be fun to go after the finish work in a few years.  I was right. 

Al

Weekly update for 5/18/2015 through 5/24/2015:

Hours building:  4.0
Hours shopping:  8.25

Money spent:  $173.72
(More paint, thinner, HVLP paint sprayer kit and associated air tools, misc. supplies.)

Well, the hull painting is giving me troubles.  Here's what it looked like after two coats, using roll and tip method:



Lousy.

So I sanded it back down and bought an automotive HVLP paint sprayer kit, and another quart of paint.  The thinner for this paint costs almost as much as the paint itself.  So I thought I'd try spraying without thinner first.  The results were even worse.  It looks like interior wall spray texture.  Gaahhh!

(I'm using Interlux Brightsides paint, $37.00 per quart.  The thinner is Interlux Special Thinner 216, which is Xylene based.  About $28.00 per quart.)

So anyway, I'll need to sand it down again, and try it with thinner mixed in.  Hopefully I'll have some good news in next week's update.  With all the time and money I'm putting into this project, I feel I must insist on a professional-looking paint job, even if I have to take it to an auto body shop.  I want the boat to look beautiful, not a slap-dash piece of cr@p.

Hang in there Mark,

This is a really tough part of the job.  Might I recommend that you try painting a small test board with fiberglass on it instead of the whole boat?  I have been messing around with this stuff for five years and have messed up a lot of things.  Every situation is different, and the paint needs to be adjusted to the conditions that you have to work in.  I work with Rustoleum so it isn't going to break my bank if I screw up.  Still it takes time to fix a bad job and you can't buy that.  Are you  using ultra fine foam rollers?  I have found that they will put a pretty flat even coat on even without tipping. 

The last time I used actual boat paint, I rolled it out on horizontal surfaces and it flowed out beautifully.  If you can roll your boat on its side you could paint one side until it is done then roll it to the other side and do the same.  Also. it kind of looks like the paint was too thin.  It will take some trial and error to figure out how thin to make it for the roller that you are going to use, and the conditions you are going to paint in. 

There is a technique that I have used with some success that does away with the sanding between coats and just lays the paint on in many coats until it is thick enough.  After the boat is sufficiently covered, sand it smooth and carefully lay the lightest coat you can on it to shine it up.  I have used this technique and made the final coat a spray job. 

I have seen some pretty nice weekenders.  They were boats that anyone would be proud of.  None of them had flawless finishes.  Even with my boat's crappy original finish I have been almost universally complimented on her looks.  Hell, I even won my class at the wooden boat show.  Do your best, and hone your skills.  It will pay off if you ever need to do a big repair on it.


Al

Hi Mark, what kind of brush are you using for "tipping"? I painted my boat with the interlux LPU as well, and didn't seem to have the trouble you are having.

I have found that the only, I say the only brushes that work are the little disposable grey foam ones that come on a wooden stick like a lollipop. I found the viscosity of the paint was such that if you were careful, you could apply such little pressure as you were dragging the brush along that paint wouldn't really stick to the brush. You don't pull the brush through the paint, you can kind of feel it squeaking along the surface of the paint. Don't apply any more pressure than the weight of the foam brush. Do this and you'll see the brush leaving a mirror surface on the paint in its wake.

The only caveat is, change brushes often, because the paint attacked the foam and you'll wind up with foam flecks in the paint if you leave it too long. Other than that it works fine.

I will try to get a picture of my boat's surface for you, so that you know I'm not lying!

Thanks Keith, I'll try that in my next experiment.


Weekly update for 5/25/2015 through 5/31/2015:

Hours building:  5.5
Hours shopping:  0.5
Money spent:  $7.29 (Naptha, quart)


Still struggling to get a good paint finish.  My best result so far was when I mixed thinner, roughly half and half with the paint, and used the HVLP sprayer.  This really surprised me because I thought that with so much thinner there wouldn't be enough opacity and it would run like crazy.  But in fact it covered well and didn't run.  It also came out of the sprayer much easier so that I could tighten the adjustments for a finer spray.  Still, there is some texture to the dried paint, although not nearly as noticeable.  I'm using the transom as a paint test bed.

I went to a local auto paints store for some advice.  While the manager qualified his advice by saying that he's not familiar with Marine paints, I was still able to glean some helpful tips.  The biggest issue turns out to be the air supply.  I have a little 6 gallon "pancake" air compressor.  He thought that a small compressor like mine is woefully inadequate to keep up with the CFM requirements of the sprayer.  Also, the regulator should be positioned down a length of hose from the compressor, to minimize condensation and pressure drop.  He also mentioned that with auto paints it's common to use a similar 1 to 1 ratio of paint to thinner.

I checked rental prices for larger compressors but I'm not inclined to spend about $100.00 per day for a rental.  Instead, I may just use the smaller detail sprayer that came with the kit instead of the larger one I've been using, make a pass, wait for the compressor to catch up, then make the next pass, etc.

Sorry, no photo this week. 

Good luck with your latest attempt! I'm sure you've noticed this, but I was surprised the first time I used this type of paint: It looks so glossy it's easy to imagine it's a nice thick membrane, well it isn't. The surface you're painting needs to be absolutely flawless if you are to get the finish you're looking for. I was amazed at the results I got the first time I painted my boat: it looked like a thick candy coating, because the paint itself is so lustrous, however on closer inspection I could actually see the microscopic swirl marks made by my orbital sander in a couple of spots. And I mean "microscopic", like you have to look very closely but they are there. It's amazing, every little imperfection shows right through, the LPU hides NOTHING.

I learned too as time goes on you care less about the perfect finish. I've bashed into things, and dragged over things, and dropped stuff on it, and now my beautiful gunwales and rub-rails are all speckled with black spots and putty, and the wood in the keel has a couple of shallow grain-wise splits and areas where the paint has rubbed off. Pretty soon you end up just being worried about keeping the boat in good shape for sailing, and the cosmetics sort themselves out. My boat looks a little road-worn now and I actually like it. The finish you showed in your photograph will look perfectly glossy when the boat is right-side-up and reflecting sunlight from the water. And if you're planning a light colour topsides, you're in luck: I find the white and cream colours lay down better than the dark blue. In fact the dark blue might be the hardest to work with.

So I went outside to take a couple of pictures of my boat, so you could see a several-year-old coat of the same paint you are using. You can see how, even from fairly close up, she looks pretty darn shiny. The LAST picture is a close-up of the one before it. Pay attention to those two pictures, because after looking at the first few, you might not believe that my paint isn't much better than yours. What I'm trying to say is, your boat is going to look REALLY shiny even if you just paint it the way you have been. Dark blue gloss paint is utterly unforgiving if you expect a mirror finish.

If you can't live without a perfect mirror finish, then it's OK to keep trying to get one. But sometimes those little imperfections, which are only visible to you anyways, will almost disappear after a few days on the water, and after you see a couple of pictures of the boat sitting right-side-up in the water, and none of the imperfections are visible even from two feet away. No-one is going to press his face up against your boat attempting to find brush-marks!

Thanks for the photos Keith.
That's a pretty nice looking Weekender you have there.  Can you tell me about the bow eye?
Mark

Thanks Mark. I hope you see what I mean though. From a normal viewing distance it looks perfectly glossy, but from the six-inch view it isn't any better than what you got on your first try.

To make the bow eye, I just used a spade bit to bore a half-inch diameter hole through the stem, and then I pounded a suitable-sized dowel through it with epoxy, then drilled a smaller hole through the dowel for the rope to pass through. It comes in handy for winching the boat onto its trailer. The idea with the dowel is that if water gets into the hole in the dowel, it can't creep into the wood of the stem. You can see however that all the pulling on it has encouraged a small crack in the wood grain to develop behind the eye. I don't think it's a big deal but it will need to be addressed someday.