The album of Ariel #422

[CapnK]

Thought I'd post some "how to" pics of the paint-stripping process that evolved with much trial and error on my part. The only 'parts' needed are a citrus-based paint stripper (the brand I used is named "CitriStrip", and sells at WalMart for ~$10/qt), a wire brush, plenty of those plastic grocery bags, some good music to listen to, and some elbow grease. This is an easy, much cleaner alternative to sanding in order to remove the 40+/- year old, interior latex paint in the v-berth and cabin.

I tried a bunch of methods - the one on the container, some alternative strategies, and what I'll show here. Of what I tried, this is the quickest and by far the *cleanest* way to strip the paint as easily as possible. The other things I tried were either ineffective, produced a *lot* of waste, or both.

The method is simple: apply an even but not too-thick coat of the stripper to the paint you want to remove. Wait a little bit - 15 minutes or so - and then get busy with the wire brush.

The plastic bags are key here; without them, this job gets messy and frustrating. After you scrub a bit with the wire brush, it begins to load up with the removed paint residue. You will notice that it starts leaving clumps of residue behind at this point. Grab a plastic bag, put it over your non-wirebrush hand. Starting at one end of the brush, let the plastic bag kind of stick to the residue. Pinch the plastic bag so that it goes between the brush bristles and strips out the stripper residue. Leaving the bag stuck where it was, move your fingers over to the next row of bristles, repeat the residue cleaning. When you get to the end of the brush, you can fold the bag around the removed residue, and place the bag into a trash can without having gotten sticky old paint residue on your hands or your $100-nice-windbreaker-birthday-present that you should have not been wearing while stripping paint. (Hey, I was doing this in the winter, it was cold...)

Two passes of stripper and wire brushing will leave the hull almost bare clean, and ready for further work. I'll attach some in-progress and results pics to the next few posts that will show this all visually.

[CapnK]

This picture shows the hull in all 3 stages of the process. Below the old bunk, the stripping is finished. Above that to the right, one layer of stripper has been applied and then wire-brushed off. Forward of that area the original paint and mildew farm has been untouched.

[CapnK]

This is the same area. In this pic, the right side has been attacked twice with stripper and wire brush, and is finished. The left side is the original paint and mildew farm, post-first coat and wirebrushing.

[CapnK]

I'll attach 3 pics to this post.

Pic 1 is the wire brush somewhat loaded-up with stripping residue. This is actually not that much (you can load the brush up a *lot* more when the residue is wetter), but was beginning to leave 'clumps' behind, and is enough to illustrate.

Pic 2 is using the plastic bag to strip the residue from the brush.

Pic 3 is the brush post-cleaning. As you can see, this works well.

[CapnK]

And last in this gripping narrative of a saga that will stand throughout all times as one of the greatest of stori...

Well, here's how the hull looks, stripped.

There are some linear spots that still have a paint-y appearance, but those are actually an acrylic glue residue from when I adhered some foam to the hull a while back as an experiment. The stripper did soften the residue and would effectively make it removable, if it were left on for much longer than I did. Easier and quicker is to let it harden back up a bit, and simply scrape it off.

It would be really easy at this point to spend just a ittle more time and completely remove 100% of the paint from down in the weave of the cloth and in the little nooks and crannies, but this gets you to 99%+ pretty quickly. For me and what I am doing, this is more than sufficient.

Here's hoping that this method saves some future Ariel fixer-uppers from excessive sanding and/or experimentation with strippers.

[Tim D.]

Kurt have you used Citristripper on bottom paint? Specifically ablative paint.

[CapnK]

Tim - Nope, I sure haven't. There is a thread here in the forums about using a product named "PeelAway" that covers the topic very well (thx to Senor Ebb!), and would be the way I would go to remove old bottom paint.