Boat painting – Day 7 – Undercoat cabin

The cabin is out of the water, and over the last few months, I’ve spent time preparing it for undercoat.

Remove flakey paint

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”

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.

 

Boat painting
Applying the topcoat

Next we start on the cabins.

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

Boat painting – Day 2

Dry docked.

2nd day spent painting with primer and undercoat.

These are the paints:-

Jotunmastic 87

It’s an epoxy and a coating mixed together, in what is known as a ‘2 pack’ then applied to bare metal.

Jotun 2 pack epoxy for narrowboats.
Jotun 2 pack epoxy for narrowboats.

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”

Boat painting at Canal Cruising, Stone

For the next few days, we’ll be painting Bonny Lady, my new temporary home.

It’s a 45ft, wide berth narrowboat, built in 1991.

Having stripped it to metal, it looks as if the previous paint job was 1 coat primer, 2 coats undercoat and one topcoat.

We’ll be doing 2 primer, 2 undercoat 2 top.

Over the next few days, I’ll be recording aspects of this narrowboat painting job on the blog.

Canal Cruising – Stone

This is where the boat is being painted. They have covered sheds we can work under.

Stripped decksThis is the finish we have to achieve for today, Monday 1st August.

Once we’ve got all the metal on the hull to this finish we can begin painting.

1st Days work in dry dock

The first day consisted of

  • Stripping the paint from the gunwales to the water-line

The rims you walk on around the side of the boat are called the ‘gunwales’, the idea of the dry-dock was to allow us to paint these.

Painting from here to the water-line is not possible.

The first job is to remove the paint from this section of boat.

Here are two before and after pictures of the stripping job. Continue reading “Boat painting at Canal Cruising, Stone”