West Systems Epoxy On Painted wood?

[BlueGhost93]

Im working on my boat and the front has a raised deck with a decent number of hatches which store life jackets, batteries, fuel tanks, etc under. The entire front deck is marine ply wood with a coat of marine paint. There is no dry rot thank god.lol But id like to coat the entire top of the deck and hatches with epoxy so when fish come aboard or the ocean waters comes over the bow and gets the wood wet, there is no chance of it soaking into the wood.

Now can I just use like 80-120 grit and get most of the paint really scuffed down to wood or do I really need to somehow strip all the paint off and then epoxy it? Id like this to last.

Thanks

Will be using 105 epoxy and have some of the westsystems thickening powder stuff

 

[jigngrub]

Re: West Systems Epoxy On Painted wood?

You can just scuff the paint real good and apply the epoxy, but the better build will be to completely remove the paint so the epoxy can penetrate the wood.

Epoxy is not UV resistant so it will need to be painted over to prevent UV breakdown, I suggest 3 coats of epoxy and 2 coats of paint on top of it.

 

[BlueGhost93]

Re: West Systems Epoxy On Painted wood?

Any suggestions on how to get the paint off? Since it isn't new paint a hot knife or hot air gun will just be pointless and be a waste of time because it wont come off in strips.