Living on a Narrowboat
To add to my ongoing series about painting the narrowboat.
Today, I was using a Needlegun to strip paint from the more difficult to access areas which can’t be stripped with traditional tools. Continue reading “Day 9 – Using a needlegun to strip paint”
The cabin is out of the water, and over the last few months, I’ve spent time preparing it for undercoat.
Mostly this has been around the rails, (down the side of the roof), and on the deck areas.
The deck area was completely stripped. The paint there had deteriorated to the point it was in need of replacement.
On most places on the cabin, the paint is in good condition, if a little faded.
Where it wasn’t, I’ve removed the old paint and primed where necessary.
It’s been a long process. Continue reading “Boat painting – Day 7 – Undercoat cabin”
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.
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.
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
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.
“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier,” – Donald Trump., Ashburn, Virginia. Aug 2nd, 2016
Dry docked.
2nd day spent painting with primer and undercoat.
These are the paints:-
It’s an epoxy and a coating mixed together, in what is known as a ‘2 pack’ then applied to bare metal.
It requires 1 coat. We’re giving it 2 with 24 hours between each coat.
Each preparation lasts for 2 hours. If you coat it any later than this, the preparation has already started to react and will become less and less effective as time goes on.
Depending on time constrains, and the size of your boat, you may need to make a number of smaller preparations to get the job done.
We have 5 people painting for about 40 mins each for half the tumblehome of a 45ft boat.
Drying time: 24hrs.
Cost: 4.7litres £42.95 Continue reading “Boat painting – Day 2”
