Stripping paint

[Brent]

Can anyone recommend a method of stripping paint?

Need to do the inside and outside (bottom), but I'd rather not deal with scraping and sanding. I don't have a lot of money, but I have even less time.

:(

Also, is the original non-slip painted on? Mine is starting to crack & chip. It seems like paint, but it could be gelcoat--I'm not familiar enough with fiberglass to be sure.

[commanderpete]

No magic bullet for stripping paint.

For the bottom, some folks swear by Peel Away, which you can buy at Home Depot type stores. I think there are two types of this product. You might need 5 gallons. This stuff is expensive and you need to do alot of scraping, and eventually sand the last of it. I've seen this job done, but haven't had to do it myself, thank heavens.

For the interior, I found the most effective tool for stripping paint is a power drill with a 3M Quick Change sanding disc pad. The sanding discs 3M sells are expensive. But, you can use the regular 5 inch hook and loop random orbital sanding sheets. You can buy them in boxes of 25.

This is a very dangerous method of stripping paint. Even with 150 grit you can gouge up the fiberglass and leave divots. With 80 grit, you could carve right through the boat. I was careful, but lets just say I shaped the fiberglass here and there anyway.

This method stripped paint faster than even my $150 Porter Cable sander.

The non skid is originally a molded in fiberglass pattern. Sounds like your deck may have been painted by a prior owner. Have any pictures?

I sure wouldn't try to tackle all these jobs at once if you have any hopes of sailing any time soon. Painting any part of the boat requires ALOT of prep work.

What you do first depends on your priorities.

If you like to sail faster, do the bottom.

Whatever project you do, don't skimp on the gloves and respirators.

[Mike Goodwin]

I had real good luck with Peel-Away last year stripping the bottom of #45 . The trick is to put it on thick and then let it sit and do the work .
It took 2 kits to do the whole bottom and I had at least a 20 year buildup of paint .

[Robin]

I've never used peel away but there's another stripper that works well on bottom paint. You can order over the internet at:http://www.starten.com/
They claim they're better than peel away. I think I first heard about it in Good Old Boat
it goes on very thick and doesn't dry out so it will go through lots of layers.
I had good luck with it.

[ebb]

Used Peel Away on the bottom of 338 one reason because it is a public yard and I couldn't deal with the dust or toxic rivers of irridescent water of the usual method.

You can say P.A. is a DRY stripper, you are not making soup that runs all over the place. You paste it on as thick as you can and pat on a supplied plastic/paper to keep it moist (when you run out - they don't put enuf in the pail - wax paper works ok). Used blue tape to seal edges.

Left the plastic drop cloths on the ground and came back 24hrs later to spatula it easily off, relatively easy, it's still a bunch of work. Especially since I didnit put it on thick enuf in some places.

P.A. got the paint off but couldn't get all the color off - the gel coat was stained blue. Filled two contractors plastic bags with the sodium hydroxide, plastic scrim, and who knows how many layers of copper paint, and the drop cloths. What a mess, but a controllable mess. Nylon scrubbers, rags and a hose removed the color right down to the white hull, no problem. A very minor river of blue that quickly diluted into the background colors of the yard.

The two 90# sacks of poison disappeared into a dumpster. Who knows where and who's habitat they're polluting now. Must have been near the first who did it in this yard as they still talk about it and some have bit the wallet and tried it (with mixed success.) In a yard it definitely is the friendliest (maybe the safest) way to remove bottom paint.

Went to the starten site and it looks to me that it is a wet system like you use when stripping furniture. You work their paste into a soup with a second liguid to dissolve the paint, seems that P.A. is a lot more easy.

[Brent]

Not planning on sailing this season :(

Here's a picture of the non-skid on the cockpit floor. It looks molded-in (a cross-hatch pattern), but you can see the crazing and chipping. Underneath it appears to be white.

Could this be the gelcoat chipping off?

[Brent]

Here's another shot, this time of the cockpit seat.

If this is the gelcoat chipping, is it enough to sand it down/off? How should I deal with this?

I was planning on painting the entire deck anyway, so I'm not concerned about saving anything. I may even bite the bullet and get the applied non-skid if that is faster than using grit in the paint (any suggestions there?).

[Brent]

Now the bottom.

Peel-Away sounds good, but I'm begining to wonder if I'll even need it. #66 has been on the hard for more than 10 years, and during some recent washing with a garden hose, the paint seemed to flake right off in places.

This is near the rudder; you can see where the flakes came off--the nearly colorless parts surrounded by white & red.

[Brent]

Here's another pic from the port side.

Are these colorless patches the gelcoat? If so, could the white be a primer for the red bottom paint? This is my first boat with bottom paint, so I'm a bit clueless here.

Some light scrubbing with a brush gets the red off the boat (and all over me), but the white seems more persistent. Is the white the gelcoat? Am I seeing gelcoat chipping off here?

I've also noticed blue in some spots, but I figured that was a prior-year's coat of bottom paint until someone mentioned in another thread that it may be gelcoat.

[dasein668]

geez does that ever look familiar... :rolleyes:

That looks almost exactly like the deck of my Triton.... I do think its chipping gelcoat. I'm stoically ignoring it right now, but eventually I guess I'll have to grind it all down and fair the decks out as best I can... Then I'll go with paint. Either Brightsides or Awlgrip for the non-non-skid parts of the decks, and Brightsides with grit for the non-skid. Personally, I don't like the applied nonskid stuff (I assume you were talking about Treadmaster, or similar). I was just recently on a brandy-new Tayana 49 (sheesh, what a reeeee-diculously huge boat!) and I was struck by how TALL the Treadmaster stuff is. Its almost like you could trip on it if you aren't careful....

bottom: We (well, mostly Heather....) just stripped and barrier coated our boat's bottom. We had what must have been at least 10 years worth of build up. In some areas though, it was flaked off, right down to the gelcoat. We used several techniques: Putty knife removed large areas easily where the paint was loosly adhered. Flaked right off with little effort. Sanding was marginally effective. We also used this whacky tool which we got on loan from a boatyard which works sort of like a cross between an orbital sander and a power planer. This thing did an incredible job of chipping the majority of the well-adhered paint from the bottom, with virtually no damage to the gel coat. Then we used peel-away on all the concave areas, like the turn of the bilge. This stuff worked well for us, but be careful! It's caustic. Heather got some burns on her arms from the stuff where it got between her gloves and her tyvek suit. Bleah. Any way you cut it, getting the paint off the bottom is a miserable job! We went to a multiseason copolymer ablative, in the hopes that we will never have to try to get the stuff off again (at least not off of this boat!!!)

[Mike Goodwin]

Brent,
I recomend filling the cracks and fissures in the gelcoat before sanding and after scraping .
3-M makes a vinylester putty that is available at West Marine . Filling first then sanding will give you a level surface and there will be less dust and crap in the holes . You could use epoxy if you want to spend more, take longer and be harder to sand .
Vinylester is more waterproof than epoxy and even the Gudgeon Bros. admit that .
There is also a surfacing putty in a giant 'toothpaste' tube , also by 3-M , that is good for the hairline cracks .

[commanderpete]

Bottom

I'll defer to the experts, but it looks like the white is the gelcoat and the grey colorless spots are areas where the gelcoat chipped off leaving the bare fiberglass. Filling and fairing those areas would be in order. A barrier coat would be nice too, although not necessary.

Non skid

Initial impression is that it all has to come off. If so, no sense fooling around with it. Very careful use of a right angle grinder might be the weapon of choice.

Curious as to why those cracks and chips developed and how deep they extend. Do you have any flex in the cockpit sole? I believe the sole is cored but the cockpit seats are not. Maybe the non skid just got weathered. It looks like the gelcoat around the non skid is in good shape.

Might want to give some thought as to the sequence of the project. I would save painting the non skid till almost the end. Otherwise, you'll end up spilling and tracking stuff on it while doing other projects. At least I would.

[Brent]

I've not noticed any flex in the cockpit sole, but I was wondering whether the bridge deck is cored. There are three holes near the starboard side (not sure why--they appear to have been mounting holes for something) and the entire bridge deck is more flexible than the rest of the cockpit seats/sole.

There are cracks all over the place, on the non-skid and white gelcoat; in the cockpit, the non-skid is worse off. There are a few spots elsewhere where the gelcoat is chipped off to reveal a void beneath.

[ebb]

freezing? Like rain or snow melt

[dasein668]

why does it crack?

hmmm. I have noticed that my areas of chipping have gotten worse over this season. Not substantially so, but I have noticed it in a few areas. I have this chipping all over the decks, so.... I think that flexing is part of the problem. I'm sure that the freeze/thaw cycling doesn't help either, but I think that once you get cracks, the water can wick between the glass and the gelcoat and that just magnifies the problem. One thing that I have noticed on my boat is that the gelcoat in these areas is THICK. 1/8 inch maybe? I have heard that the more thickly applied gelcoats tend to crack and craze more easily than thinner applications.

repair?

I'm not sure if filling and fairing is the way to go, only because I'd be afraid that the original gelcoat may well decide to continue coming apart. I am seriously considering grinding away all of the gelcoat on the decks and then fairing the bare glass with a *thin* application of west system w/fairing filler. Then paint. But that's just my $0.02.....;)

[Mike Goodwin]

That's a waste of time and WEST system , use vinylester resin and a layer of glass mat ( non-woven cloth ).
WEST system is not a panacea , it is not the best product for most boat repairs , if you were sealing bare wood it would be a different story .
It is a lot more work and is not quite as water proof as vinylester , it just sticks to wood better .
WEST will require more sealer and topcoats to prevent UV degradation . It must be scrubbed before it is sanded to get the waxy amine blush off the surface , so paint will stick .
Once you use WEST , polyester and vinylester wont stick as good .
And last of all , when it comes to epoxies , WEST is not the best out there , it is the Budwieser of epoxies , just good marketing.
In the last 25 years I have purchased WEST in 55 gal. drums on several occasions ,so you might say I have a little experience with epoxy.I have also used System 3 , RAKA, Evercoat ,FGCI and some other nameless epoxies .
The stuff from fgci.com is just as good and a lot cheaper than any of the others .
Just for coating a surface even straight polyester resin @$20 gal. would be better and you could be sanding in an hour .

[dasein668]

Mike,

Good points about epoxy vs vinyl/polyester. My thinking was: the polyester gelcoat didn't stick the first time around (maybe I shouldn't be so harsh on the stuff... it is near 40 years old!).... and my experience, admittedly somewhat limited, is that epoxy is both "sticky" and flexible (at least relatively so) so it seems like a good option. Definately not the cheapest option, and perhaps not the best one either.... we shall see! ;)

WEST may not be the cheapest, but it hasn't let me down. I have had negative experiences with System 3, and have a friend who had a bad experience with MAS, so I have stuck with it. I'll have to check out this fgci stuff. Thanks for the tip!

[ebb]

any epoxy that blushes is an embarrasment, why would you work with an inferior product? It's marketing allright, Bud.


Take a look at www.epoxyproducts.com
Dig around. Fascinatin.

[commanderpete]

I guess I was looking for input as to the cause of Brent's nonskid condition to make sure his repair will actually work.

Going through all that effort and having the problem reappear is, to my mind, a prospect too horrible to contemplate.

If the deck is stiff, it sounds like the cracks are from age and weather, rather than cracks caused by movement or stress loads. The latter require a structural fix or they will surely reoccur.

But, some more pictures showing the location and pattern of the cracks in the gelcoat around the nonskid might provide more clues.

The bridge deck would be vertical, so not cored. Movement there would be unusual and warrant further investigation.

[Bill]

FYI - the bridge deck on the Ariel is a deck (cockpit seat) running athwartship aft of the companionway.

[Brent]

Given that most of what I've seen is in and around the cockpit, I'll venture to guess that the chipping is because of foot traffic & the environment.

When I first purchased her, #66 had a cockpit full of leaves (she had been stored under several birch and fir trees)--much of which had composted (there was even a tiny fir sapling growing in there!). The cockpit area is more noticably cracked than, say, the cabin top, so my guess is that the cracking allowed water (trapped in the cockpit by the moist mulch) to seep in, and the freeze/thaw cycle caused the gelcoat separation. Now that I am pounding around the boat, my footfalls are probably putting the final touches on and causing the chipping.

Of course, this doesn't explain the chipping near the rudder. After some thought, I think that may be due to the water in the bilge. Since I bought her, #66 has had water there and the level hasn't changed noticably. If it is slowly seeping in through the various cracks & holes, then it must be slowly seeping out somewhere. Perhaps via osmosis out the bottom of the hull? Again, the freeze/thaw cycle could've separated the gelcoat, and now that I'm scrubbing the bottom, it is coming off.

Thanks to all for chiming in on this topic; this is why I come here. It is good to get advice on how to fix something; better to figure out the cause and keep it from happening again. It certainly helped to have someone else to bounce ideas off of.

I am curious though; if water is seeping out via osmosis, then why aren't there any blisters? Could it be the calendar age of the gelcoat that makes it inflexible and chip, or the fact that it is gelcoat made 40 years ago, and therefore it is less flexible than gelcoat made ten years ago?

[Mike Goodwin]

That water could be evaporating with the heat we have been having lately on the east coast .
#45 had her bilge vacumned dry and painted in May , still dry as a bone .
BTW>
My cockpit looks exactly like yours , same chipping gray non-skid. I'm gonna fill it , sand it , paint on some more non-skid and go sailing till it comes off again . It is mostly cosmetic anyway , seal the surface so the water runs off and keep it sealed (painted ) , go sailing !!

[Brent]

I was scanning through Sailnet's articles when I came across this...

http://www.sailnet.com/collections/gearandmaintenance/index.cfm?articleID=woodto0067&coll_cat=Hull&Coll_name=Hull%20and%20Deck

[Mike Goodwin]

I'm just going to fill and sand then paint with Brightsides with some non-skid added and go sailing . My boat will be legal again next week .

I say 'don't worry about it so much ' it wont sink the boat or kill anyone . Sailing is much more fun than fixing gelcoat . Make a teak grating so you cant see it if you need something to do , but go sailing .

[Brent]

I'll probably do that too. There was another article on Sailnet describing how a couple put the Treadmaster on their 46-foot sailboat. Not just pricey, but according to them, more difficult and time consuming than adding grit to paint.

I'm looking for cheap & easy--in that order :D

[Mike Goodwin]

Go to West Marine and get the Interlux non-skid additive for paint . Nothing cheaper , easier or quicker . Looks good and works good . Put it in the Brightsides of your choice .