Re: Painting a boat on a budget....Need help
Yeah, that IS the way the MFG's suggest doing it, but the guys here on iBoats have found that the Roll n' Roll yields superior results with FAR less bush marks or overlap tracings. DREWPSTER and others experience tell the tale.
I worked on my boat all weekend and figure I would give an update.
I used rustoleum fiberglass primer. Its part of their marine series and I bough two quarts of this stuff. When you pop the lid off of the can you are greated with brown water on top and what looks to be playdough on the bottom. After mixing for 10 minutes you now have something that resembles a very thick milkshake. I did not thin this primer at all; I applied it directly after mixing it in the can. I applied my first coat a primer a little prematurely. I thought I was done my bodywork but as the first coat of primer revealed I was not. I had to do a lot of scratch repair and apply a little filler hear and there.
I next applied the second coat of primer and was once again greated by the playdough. I rolled the primer on with the four inch hot dog rollers. I only used around 3/4 of a quart of paint to paint the entire exterior from the rub rail to the bootom paint and the transom including the storage area. I was very happy with the coverage of the rustoleum paints. Boat is a 20 foot cubby cabin grady white with waist high gunals( i am not sure how to spell it maight be gunnels?).
I used rustoleum professonal gloss white paint with 15% thinner and the magic hardener in it. I applied the first coat of paint and found it difficult to roll the paint on and then roll out the air bubbled because my boat is not flat on the sides. It has the fake wood look(dont remember what its called) so its very time consuming to get all the edges covered fully in paint; looks like lap board siding. Then disaster struck I dropped my air bubble removing roller in the grass twice. I was not having any luck using two rollers at this point so I only used one roller from hear on out. I adopted a new technique using this roller as well.
My new technique was to roll the paint on as usual. Then basically I would have to roll the area several times after the paint had time to set tup and I had a relatively dry roller. I basically combined the functions of two rollers into one. This worked remakable well. i had zero runs or roller marks but I did get some very ligth orange peel. My brother and father in law came out and were amazed with how it looks. I am going to do one or two more coats depending on how my second coat looks. I am very happy with the results and hope that the orange peel settles some as the paint dries. after my second coat if there is still orange peel can I do anything about removing most of the orange peel. I am thinkign about trying with the badger brush for my next coat though.
I think it looks beautiful especially for a 32 year old boat. I did not get any pictures because as soon as I finished it felt like it was going to rain so I hurried the boat back into the garage to dry. By the way the father in law was so impressed he asked me if I could help him with his 28 foot boat. I guess I impressed him. I should apply my second coat tonight. Sorry for the thousand word response but I was trying not to forget any details for people wanting to try this on their boat.
EDIT:
One thing I forgot to mention is that I went to my brothers house directly after painting the baot to help him with some things. I probably spend two hours there. I went home to try to get this paint off of my arms/hands and I could not remove it. I took two showers and scrubbed my arms/hands and there is still a lot of paint on there. If this is and indication of how tuff this paint is I am very pleased. I am definitly going to where gloves when applying another coat tonight.
