Re: Refinishing

Posted by Howard on Sep 28, 2004

if you want to go natural...the most important thing is that you need to get all the old paint off....i recently refinished a boat...i repainted...but could have gone natural if that is what i had chosen. my suggestions/ observations...

- use a ROS (power sander) on the wide/flat portions of the hull but hand sand around the edges and bow and stern. i would not worry so much about getting down to the cloth as much as going through the cloth to the wood.

- start with 100 grit to get the paint off.

- use a vacume attachment to your sander to pick up all that coloured dust...be vary cautious about keeping everything clean (the boat, your work area, your brushes, etc). so that when you refinish/re-epoxy...you don't get coloured dust in your new finish.

- after ALL the paint is off you can give a fresh coat of epoxy to fix any areas where you may have sanded into the cloth or worse.

- at this point follow the normal instructions for prepping for a brite finish.

expect to take some time to get it done. it is kind of laborious/boring work. for some reason, not as satisfying as the firt time i prepped the hull. i found it useful to mark off three to four foot sections of half the boat at a time and spread the work over a week clearing each small section completely and then stopping for the day...to give myself a sense of progress and encourage me to be very thorough to remove all the paint.

my only other caution is that the previously painted surfaces may have a different UV protection than areas that you had originally done bright...so you may see a slight shadow/difference in colour of the wood underneath the painted surface than the varnished surface. so the original paint shadow may show under the now all brite surface...but a season in the sun tends to even this out pretty much.

as an aside, if you did not have deck glass on the boat...this project can be a good opportunity to add this handy re-inforcement that is now pretty standard on all the new CLC construction

good luck

hs

In Response to: Refinishing by Eric King on Sep 28, 2004

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