Stripping Bottom Paint

[Jim Walsh]

Looking good. Nice to see the big jobs in the rear view mirror. That 40 grit is very aggressive but you have lots of experience so I’m sure it’ll work out fine.

[John Stone]

Looking good. Nice to see the big jobs in the rear view mirror. That 40 grit is very aggressive but you have lots of experience so I’m sure it’ll work out fine.

You are right Jim. Very happy to have that behind me. I have an epoxy barrier coat with impregnated ablative paint that is chemically bonded. The ablative has to come off before i can apply new barrier coat or it will fail when the solvents in the new barrier coat attack the left over ablative. I always carry a bunch of 80 grit too. Let’s see how it goes. I hope it comes off easy but hope is not a course of action. I use the combat engineer formula at the end of an assessment of “+P” for how much demo to use—P for plenty.

MTF.

[John Stone]

Half way complete sanding starboard side. Used the 5” Porter Cable DA RO with mini cyclone and vacuum Thought I had plenty of 40 grit. Turns out I had (100) 80 grit. Took 29 disk to go half way. I’ll order some more 40. Makes a b big difference. But I just kept going with what I had on hand since wx is cool. Should be able to finish starboard side tomorrow with what I have in hand. Interestingly scraping was easier than sanding.

Battery boxes complete just sorting out how to anchor them and partially complete with that.

I can secure them without cinch straps but it would be nice to have quality ones in place for a back up off shore.

Keep going mister.

[John Stone]

Things got interesting.

For two days I have been sanding with the Porter Cable 5” DA RO. I noticed it did not cut like it used to ten years ago. It was still powerful but the action was more like a heavy RO but not light and convenient like a palm RO. My arms were beat but I kept pulling off the disks and applying new one and just focused on keeping a smooth surface. About 5 disks to sand a two foot wide section from waterline to keel. Except for the tired arms all was good.

Then all of a sudden the sander started jumping around. Right away I thought that’s what it was like when I bought it 10 years ago. Back then you had to be really careful because it would just cut deep ruts if you didn’t really hold it smooth and even. Well, that’s what it what it started doing. I went from needing 5 disks to maybe 2 for the same hull area. I turned it down from 6 to four and really had a challenging time as it cut uneven. I was using 60 grit PSA disks. It took a little while to figure it out. It was like it’s cutting ability tripled.

I may have to work the palm orbital sander pack into play at the turn of the bilge. it’s possible I could finish up tomorrow.

With maybe 2/3s if the hull sanded I have used about 50 disks.

[John Stone]

I took the sander apart last night. I don’t know exactly how it works but I cleaned it and blew compressed air through it. It worked fine today. Who knows....

So the boat is sanded, except under the jack stands and where the keel rests on the timber. I’m sure glad to have it behind me. It was not fun. My cup of character runnith over.

I estimate 10 hours to scrape and about 10-12 hours to sand. I used 50 disks total on day 1 and 2 and used 22 more disks today and will will probably use another 5-6 under the jack stands. And just before we barrier coat in a couple weeks I’ll runover the hull with an RO palm sander so figure another 20 disks. So call it 100. I have about $75 in disks. I already owned the sanders. My labor does not count.

For any forum administrators that read this thread feel free to move the whole thread to projects. It started as a question about paint strippers but turn into a project instead.

[fmueller]

Good work John. This is why at age 70 I have a 27’ boat