Boat painting – Day 5 – Topcoating the hull

This is where we were up to on day 5 topcoating the hull.

It’s the first coat of topcoat on the hull, and to be honest, I’m not very happy with the finish.

Primer

In order to get away from the rough surface created when stripped to bare metal, it’s suggested that you have 2-3 coats of primer.

Due to pressure from members of the painting crew,  1 coat of primer was decided upon.

As well as that, we didn’t give the undercoat enough time to ‘cure’ before sanding down.

We weren’t able to sand the brushmarks out of the paint.

The top-coat hull now has a combination of brush-marks and the ferrous metal finish beneath.

We’re hoping to sand these out before we apply the final coat of topcoat.

Suggestions for dry-docking

When I made the original booking, we agreed to 7 days for the hull, which was changed to 4.

I said this would not be enough, as we would be spending 6 days just painting.

I would suggest, if you intend to paint your hull, and achieve a good finish, you’re going to require

• 1 Days strip and prep
• 2 days primer
• 2 days undercoat
• 2 days curing
• 2 days topcoat

That’s 9 days.

Maybe 10 days to do a good job.

We’ve done it in 4, and it needs doing again.

 

Next we start on the cabins.

I’m not prepared for the same thing to happen on this, so we’ll see what happens.