jpmurphy
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2009
- Messages
- 358
After a week of sporadic sanding to clean the hull I am finally making some progress. I started with 40 grit paper to get all of the high oxidation spots off, then went back over everything with 60 grit and again with 100 grit paper to "pull up" the pits. The surface is 99.9% free of pits. There some blemishes in the alum, probably from the years of the oxidation working into the metal, but most of that should come up with the final sanding with the finer grit papers. The entire process was done with just sand paper. No solvents and no compounds. I wasted a bit of money on several different compounds that did little more than clean the surface but not remove the oxidation and did absolutely nothing for the pits. At this point nearly all of the starboard gunwhale and transom are ready for fine tuning. A little trim sanding remains and thats about all. Hopefully I should be done sanding and ready to wash, buff and polish in two more weeks. 
