Paint issue resolved

The biggest issue my last post dealt with was the paint catastrophe I had going on. Im glad to report that Ive figured out the problem, and I can move forward with getting items checked off of the list.

The paint problem I was having is resolved, and Im happy to report that it was all operator error. The problem I was having with my white paint was that the paint was not atomizing correctly. In a nut shell, the paint particles were too large when they were sprayed on to the metal giving the finish a texture. The problems I was having were a direct result of the following: I was using the wrong reducer. I should have been using MEK, and I was using lacquer thinner. The MEK evaporates more quickly than the lacquer thinner so I can build the film more evenly. My air hose to my paint pot had too small of an ID, so I increased the hose form 1/4" to 1/2" . The friction loss of air in the smaller ID hose caused me to loose volume and pressure in the pot and effected atomization. The hose ID had never been an issue with all the other paints Ive applied, but this particular species of white was just a little different animal. The shop temperature was just a little too cold, and required more attention to how I was reducing the paint, and what I was reducing with.

So, Im going with a dark green on the hull, and an off white on the super structure and decks. The green looks darker in these pictures, and the white looks whiter in these pictures.

Like I said in my last post, this paint is shiny, very tough, and is able to be polished and buffed if I ever have to make repairs on it.

Now that the paint issue is no longer an issue I can move forward. I want to finish the fore deck and get that final painted. To finish the fore deck I need to mount the deck winch and fabricate the dorade boxs for the guest/kids cabin. Mounting the deck winch is more of a project than I had figured since I might have to re configure the anchor rollers. Ill have more on that job later as I get some things figured out.

In case no one has noticed, I added a music player to my hipster blog gadgets. A fellow builder Im friends with has a blog where you can check out his fine work @

http://www.odysseyyachts.com/Odyssey_Yachts/Odyssey.html

The song, "Home At Last" on this playlist, is a more modern interpretation of Brians boats name, but youll have to visit his blog to know what I mean. I"m now looking for a song geared towards Hawaiian ducks that are prone to wandering for another builder I follow.

Of course a song for Shannon is on board for all to guess, and one she is sure of.

Turn up the volume on your computer to follow along.

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Paint it black

Fathers day weekend found me spending two days getting the anti foul paint on the bottom. Saturday was spent scuffing the bottom and welding anode studs in place. Sunday had me power washing off the scuffing dust, taping the water line, and rolling on two coats of anti foul. This is one of those jobs Id been blowing off and avoiding, but she cant go in the water without this bit of work and it is now off of the list.

The week before, my bud, aluminum sail boat builder, and artist Brian Russel ( THE ART OF BOATBUILDING ) was in town to dedicate a sculpture he built, and stopped by to check on progress. While he was on my site, he gave me a hand installing the saddle for the 10" hydraulic bow thruster. Having another set of skilled hands makes a difference sometimes, and getting the thruster saddle in position while another person is inside working the bolts is a big help. The saddle is a permanent part of the bow thruster which is bolted to the tube and sealed with 5200. The saddle is not meant to be removed as are the other components of the thruster. The thruster leg, and the motor, are fastened to the saddle. The thruster is a 10" hydraulic unit producing 15 hp of thrust. The thruster is powered by a live PTO driven straight off of the Twin Disc transmission.  It was built and designed by Key Power Inc. and its been nothing but a great experience dealing with Jim at Key Power. The component castings are excellent, as well as all the machining. All the parts are machined on five axis CNC machines and it shows by how well everything fits. Having the bow thruster installed now makes the front of the boat water tight, and its checked off of the list. Its amazing how little space the hydraulic thruster takes up.

The last part of the water tight work was getting the prop shaft installed along with the drippless shaft log seal. I went with PYI on the shaft seal, and well just have to see how that works. The installation was pretty straight forward with no issues at all.  I will say that the bilge is filthy, as is the rest of the boat. Theres a good two days of cleaning that needs to be done.

I had ordered the control cables for the throttle and transmission, and Washington Marine had some cables on their shelves that were longer that what I had measured, but told me to see if they could work. The next to nothing price they were going to sell me the cables for was worth trying to make them happen, but in the end, they were too long. The correct length cables should be in by the end of the week or early next week, and once that happens, Ill get them installed.

Theres lots to do before I can order up the travel lift to make the 1500 carry to the river, so Im going to keep telling everyone I have a list that I keep working off of, and keep checking items off of my fictional list.

Cheers

     

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Bottom paint

The below the water line part of the boat is painted with the barrier coat. The boat can now be removed from the building cradle.

Having purchased the metal for the boat wheel abraded and primed, getting her bottom ready for the barrier coat was not to bad of a job. There is not much good anyone can say about sand blasting, but as far as sand blasting a boat this size, this job could have been worse. While grinding metal may make the metal look like it is in an ideal surface for paint, the profile created by sand blasting is the gold standard for a mechanical bond of paint to metal. Because the metal had already been blasted, my focus on preparing the hull was to blast to white metal the welds and weld zone, all the print through from the interior frames and longitudinal stringers and the grinder marks. All the rest of the metal was blasted to "scuff" the existing primer to give the barrier coat paint a profile to stick to.

I had talked to a commercial blaster about doing this job, and while his price was reasonable, I felt as if I had  decent enough equipment to do the job. The air compressor in the barn is a single phase 10 hp with an 80 gallon tank. Because the mill scale had already been removed, and I was not taking all the hull to white metal, the barn air compressor could handle the job. Before starting blasting, I cleaned the shop and gave the floor a good sweeping with a back pack blower. The blasting pot I used only holds 100 lbs, so after the pot was emptied, the sand was swept up off of the shop floor, poured through a screen and re used. After three screenings, the sand was thrown away. The weather was about as perfect as one could fine to sand blast with 70 degree temperatures, high pressure, and darn near zero humidity. Blasting was started late in the afternoon and finished the next morning. About eight hours was all it took to do the job.

Because the blasting was done inside during picture perfect weather, blooming of rust was not an issue. Before starting the first coat of paint, the floor was swept again and the hull blown off with compressed air. The paint I decided to use is a PPG product called Amerlock and is a two part paint. My paint rep has been selling it to the operators of push boats and tugs, and thats what theyre using below the water line. Because the paint is so thick, I decided to roll it on vs using reducer and trying to spray it. I did reduce the paint 5 % by volume which gave it a better consistency and seemed to help roll it on. As long as I did not allow more than 24 hours between coats, a chemical bond between coats would occur and no scuffing was needed. Three days gave me three coats. Once the boat is off of the cradles, Ill blast where the cradle was, scuff the rest of barrier coat and apply the anti foul.

Because this paint is designed for below the water line, and the rest of the primer on the boat is not for below the water line, I painted the barrier coat six inches above the water line. My plan is to bring the top coat green hull paint down on the barrier coat by two inches which will allow me to bring the anti foul bottom  paint four inches above the water line. The boot stripe should start at the six inch elevation which will hide the parting line created by the barrier coat. The boot stripe will not get painted until after launch once we are able to see just where the water line ends up.

Having the bottom painted allows one to better see how the boat will sit in the water. With this job finished and all the cut up fore and aft paint work completed, painting the hull green is now a reasonable job that should take only a few hours to  as Im only going to spray one side of the hull at a time. Scuffing, taping, and minor repairs should take a day , maybe a day and a half. The paint should be wrapped up by early June.

Cheers

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Hull Paint

The best way to finish a boat is to apply as many coats of paint as you can afford.  So far I have applied close to a half gallon of paint to the hull (5 coats).  Im going to keep applying paint until I run out. That should be about 12 coats at this rate. That should suffice.

Religion, politics, and boat paint are the top three most controversial subjects in the known universe.  I spent months reading what everyone had to say on the subject. There are a dizzying array of paints available, all with their own sets of pros and cons.  Every type of paint has its proponents and critics. In the end, I decided to go with Porch and Floor enamel. Porch and Floor enamel is the one paint that most people seem to agree, (more or less),  is a perfectly fine paint to use on a boat.

On my last build I used Interlux Brightside.  Brightside is terrific paint.  I was very pleased with the results. It goes on smooth, levels very nicely, covers well, dries hard, but its somewhat expensive.

I read numerous times that Porch and Floor enamel is essentially the same thing as Brightside at a fraction of the cost.  John Welsford also recommends alkyd (oil-based) enamel paints.  So I decided to give it a go. Remember, the best way to finish a boat is to apply as many coats of paint as you can afford.

Interlux Brightside paint is a polyurethane alkyd enamel that costs about $110/gal at the local West Marine.

Ace Porch & Floor paint is a polyurethane alkyd enamel that costs $27/gal at the local Ace Hardware.

After using both, I honestly cant tell the difference.

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Hull finish paint

Of course, in all things boat building, this job took about double the time I figure and posted about in my last blog post. The reason for the underestimated time was worthy of the extra time in my opinion.

When I had completed the body work on the hull, and sprayed the last coat of primer, I had thought I had the sanding to a good enough quality to paint. Thats kind of a loaded  response, as the primer was probably smooth enough to paint, I just wanted it a bit smoother. The problem I was fearing was that not having the primer perfectly flat would cause the top coat to have some blemish. Without more sanding, the top coat would still be shiny and pretty, but the blemish I was worried about would make it a problem to revive the finish years down the road with polishing and wax. The primer needed to be flatter. So given the lessons learned on the transom and wanting a more user friendly finish, I decided to re sand the hull.

Sanding the hull ( Im only talking about the port side today) to 320 grit was not to bad of a job. Its kind of hard to describe what Im talking about, but once you start to sand with 320, minute high spots in the primer start to appear. More sanding flattens the primer, and the high spots disappear. The primer starts to get a shine to it, and it is almost as if it is being burnished by the finer grit sand paper. 320 seems fine enough for a boat paint job, but Im sure body shops working on cars would take primer to at least 400 and more likely 600. There are for sure better ways to spend ones time than sanding primer so I approached in my not getting in a hurry way of doing things. Spending an hour  before leaving for work in the morning and a hour after work in the evening, helped me keep the patience  needed for this type of work.

Wanting to break up visual size of the hull, I decided to paint the rub rails another color. The lower rub rail extends around the back of the boat and becomes the swim platform. I dont know how many of you have painted the color red  in your house, but I can tell you that I now know that red industrial paint has the same problems as red house paint. You have to prime anything you intend to use red paint on. I had already painted the swim platform white, and the swim platform part of the rub rail green. I re sanded the swim platform rub rail, taped it off and began spraying red over the green. The green makes the red a few shades darker than the other ( primed) rub rail. The few spots on the swim platform rub rail  where I sanded through the green in to the white primer, the red does not cover the white. This part of the rub rail is going to  have to be sanded, primed, and re painted. Truthfully, it doesnt look that bad, but it is noticeable enough that I want to re do it.

Taping off the hull took also took quite a bit more time than I had figured. I probably have five or six hours invested in taping. Once I had an area taped, I wiped it down with a tack cloth to remove the dust. I started taping on Thursday night, and finished it Friday after work so I would be ready to spray Saturday morning.

When I blasted and painted the barrier coat on the hull bottom, I brought the barrier coat six inches above the water line. I brought the green two inches down past the barrier coat, so when the boat is in the water, about four inches of the bottom paint will be seen. The white barrier coat will be covered with red anti foul paint. 

The weather here has suddenly turned hot, and Saturdays forecast was for temperatures in the 90s. Figuring it would take four hours to spray the port side, I wanted to be spraying by 7:00 am and finished before the 90s found their way into the barn. As I began spraying, I immediately had an issue with the paint pot which took and hour to resolve. While I finally got the pot working correctly, it caused me to have a less than ideal finish on the area under the lower rub rail, between the water line and the rub rail. Ill have to do some paint repair in this area, but now that I know whats involved in doing that, Im not to worried about it.

Getting three coats of paint on her requires more of the elusive patience, and keeping track of where one is in regard to where one just sprayed. The first coat to hit the metal covers the primer, but not too heavy. The second coat goes on while the paint is starting to get tacky which allows the second coat to cover while not  sag. If the spray gun volume and fan width is tuned in right, the second coat is probably good enough to call the area finished. The third coat gets risky, because you now have some thickness developed and the paint wants to start sagging. The second coat needs to be well on its way to being tacky, or you could develop a sag on the third coat. You have to wait for the paint to tack up to accept more material, but you cant wait too long or it will to dry and you get dry spots where you start and stop the  spray pattern. Im using up to 10% by volume of reducer in the paint, so it tends to dry quicker. I have one spot below the bulwark at the wheel house, where I had a drying issue on the third coat and Ill have to polish it to blend it back together. This is where sanding the primer perfectly flat pays off as it makes polishing much easier.

I still have to finish paint the starboard side, so Im starting prep work on it this week. Given how busy Im getting with work, I doubt Ill have it completed by next weekend, so Im giving myself another week to call the paint work a wrap. Im big time happy to see so much shine when I walk in to the barn but Im more happy to have reached this milestone.

Cheers

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