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B
Bill
What kind of paint do you need to remove?
Hate to answer a question with a question, but that very much depends on what kind of bottom paint you're trying to remove and what new paint you want to use.
Hate to answer a question with a question, but that very much depends on what kind of bottom paint you're trying to remove and what new paint you want to use.
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joe phibbs
hoo boy!
We have a 31' hunter with at least a dozen coats of antifouling paint. I researched various methods, sandblasting, sanding and chemicals, by the boatyard doing the work and we doing it. In lower chesapeake bay, sandblasting is $20 to $25 a foot! They assure me that they will be careful of the gelcoat, but I am not sure. Price is an object. No one around here will attempt to sand by hand or machine.... just too messy and takes too long for that many coats. Other alternative would be to sand it carefully and get it smooth enought to put a really good coat of Trinidad on there. But the weight of the paint still on there will continue to build up and weigh us down. The other way would be chemicals. Boat US sells a PeelAway product for $250 per five gallon drum. We figure at 20 sf per gallon, we would need $500 worth and still have to do it ourselves. The last choice for us is the PeelAway sold at Sherwin Williams. I chatted with Barry Dumond in NYC: he makes all of that stuff. He says use PeelAway1 @ $105 a drum, bought at paint store. I am not sure that stuff will be thick enough to stay on my hull long enough to start acting. Nor am I positive it will leave my barrier coat alone (but I dont even know if I have a barrier coat! The paint store stuff says on the label it will work on fiberglass. Anybody else out there wanna throw in? Try Dumond Chemicals web site and review their product line. Regards, Joe
We have a 31' hunter with at least a dozen coats of antifouling paint. I researched various methods, sandblasting, sanding and chemicals, by the boatyard doing the work and we doing it. In lower chesapeake bay, sandblasting is $20 to $25 a foot! They assure me that they will be careful of the gelcoat, but I am not sure. Price is an object. No one around here will attempt to sand by hand or machine.... just too messy and takes too long for that many coats. Other alternative would be to sand it carefully and get it smooth enought to put a really good coat of Trinidad on there. But the weight of the paint still on there will continue to build up and weigh us down. The other way would be chemicals. Boat US sells a PeelAway product for $250 per five gallon drum. We figure at 20 sf per gallon, we would need $500 worth and still have to do it ourselves. The last choice for us is the PeelAway sold at Sherwin Williams. I chatted with Barry Dumond in NYC: he makes all of that stuff. He says use PeelAway1 @ $105 a drum, bought at paint store. I am not sure that stuff will be thick enough to stay on my hull long enough to start acting. Nor am I positive it will leave my barrier coat alone (but I dont even know if I have a barrier coat! The paint store stuff says on the label it will work on fiberglass. Anybody else out there wanna throw in? Try Dumond Chemicals web site and review their product line. Regards, Joe
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Stu Sauer
Another option
What I would try first is a 'red devil' paint scraper. It will cost less than 5 bucks and easily takes off loose paint, ablative paint, vinyl paint,etc. the one problem type might be epoxy paint. You can wear a white tyvec painter's suit and a typical cheap painters 'surgical' mask and let all the dry chips fall onto a plastic ground cloth for easy non-toxic clean-up. Get a couple extra blades or a sharpening stone, and maybe grind off the corners of the blades if you are inexperienced with a scraper. Follow-up with hand sanding with 80-100 grit 'wet or dry' paper in abucket of slightly soapy water using a rubber sanding block, wipe it all down with paint thinner type solvent and you are ready to re-paint. I had to hand scrape my 28.5 many years ago because I needed to remove several layers of vinyl paint down to the two coats of epoxy barrier coat I wanted to keep. I also took the opportunity to add several coats of Interlux 2000 to beef up the original barrier coats. Two of us took two days of our spring boatyard labor --scrape scrape--talk to the neighbors --scrape scrape-- have lunch, etc, but our lungs, sinuses and the environment were the better for it.
What I would try first is a 'red devil' paint scraper. It will cost less than 5 bucks and easily takes off loose paint, ablative paint, vinyl paint,etc. the one problem type might be epoxy paint. You can wear a white tyvec painter's suit and a typical cheap painters 'surgical' mask and let all the dry chips fall onto a plastic ground cloth for easy non-toxic clean-up. Get a couple extra blades or a sharpening stone, and maybe grind off the corners of the blades if you are inexperienced with a scraper. Follow-up with hand sanding with 80-100 grit 'wet or dry' paper in abucket of slightly soapy water using a rubber sanding block, wipe it all down with paint thinner type solvent and you are ready to re-paint. I had to hand scrape my 28.5 many years ago because I needed to remove several layers of vinyl paint down to the two coats of epoxy barrier coat I wanted to keep. I also took the opportunity to add several coats of Interlux 2000 to beef up the original barrier coats. Two of us took two days of our spring boatyard labor --scrape scrape--talk to the neighbors --scrape scrape-- have lunch, etc, but our lungs, sinuses and the environment were the better for it.
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Don K.
Thanks Stu.
It seams like a good way to go. I have two partners and I think we can handle that method just fine.
It seams like a good way to go. I have two partners and I think we can handle that method just fine.
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ED
Chemical Paint Remover
Sherwin Williams Peel Away is the same composition as the Marine variety that is reported not to hurt the gelcoat (check the material safety data sheet from the manufacturer's website). I needed 6 gal from Sherwin Williams for my 30 ft. It went on fairly easily on the more verticle surfaces, a bit tougher to smear it above my head on the more horitontal surfaces. Wear goggles. The stuff removed years of bottom paint cleanly. The first day required about 5 hours to apply the remover and paper covering. On the second day, most of the paint and paper had slid off to reveal the fiberglass. Clean up with water and a wipe down with white vinegar provided a bottom ready for fresh paint.
Sherwin Williams Peel Away is the same composition as the Marine variety that is reported not to hurt the gelcoat (check the material safety data sheet from the manufacturer's website). I needed 6 gal from Sherwin Williams for my 30 ft. It went on fairly easily on the more verticle surfaces, a bit tougher to smear it above my head on the more horitontal surfaces. Wear goggles. The stuff removed years of bottom paint cleanly. The first day required about 5 hours to apply the remover and paper covering. On the second day, most of the paint and paper had slid off to reveal the fiberglass. Clean up with water and a wipe down with white vinegar provided a bottom ready for fresh paint.
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Glen Simonds
Our experience removing bottom paint
Don, We stripped the bottom paint off our Hunter 29.5 last spring. It was a 1994 with about 9 years of build-up and questionable adhesion in some areas making it very rough. I bought the Peel-A-Way from Boat US. Prior to putting it on we scrapped all that would come off easily. Then we went at it with big wall paper brushes and the special paper. Personally the results were mixed. In areas where we has the chemical on thick it softened the paint good. In areas where we probably applied too thin a coat it was less effective. But no where did the bottom paint stick to the paper and peel off as I had invisioned. We waited the 24 hrs recommended before peeling. The paper came off in most places by itself with no paint on it and we had to scrapped a blue tar like substance off (and in places the paper as well) - and believe me it was just like tar and got everywhere. We also found that the area above the waterline was like cement - the chemical bairly made an impression. We got so fed up we got the marine shop to finish it off and they sanded it down. I am certainly prepared to admit that we probably contributed to the poor performance by not putting the Peel-a-Way on thick enough but it never really worked as we had thought when we started. Possibly a second coat would have helped. If you use it plan on a lot more paper than the kit comes with, put a big tarp under the boat, use gloves and disposable overalls, old shoes and tools and throw it all away after.Was it worth it.....yes - we converted to VC17 (fresh water on the Great Lakes) and the new smooth botton gained us over a knot extra! Good luck.
Don, We stripped the bottom paint off our Hunter 29.5 last spring. It was a 1994 with about 9 years of build-up and questionable adhesion in some areas making it very rough. I bought the Peel-A-Way from Boat US. Prior to putting it on we scrapped all that would come off easily. Then we went at it with big wall paper brushes and the special paper. Personally the results were mixed. In areas where we has the chemical on thick it softened the paint good. In areas where we probably applied too thin a coat it was less effective. But no where did the bottom paint stick to the paper and peel off as I had invisioned. We waited the 24 hrs recommended before peeling. The paper came off in most places by itself with no paint on it and we had to scrapped a blue tar like substance off (and in places the paper as well) - and believe me it was just like tar and got everywhere. We also found that the area above the waterline was like cement - the chemical bairly made an impression. We got so fed up we got the marine shop to finish it off and they sanded it down. I am certainly prepared to admit that we probably contributed to the poor performance by not putting the Peel-a-Way on thick enough but it never really worked as we had thought when we started. Possibly a second coat would have helped. If you use it plan on a lot more paper than the kit comes with, put a big tarp under the boat, use gloves and disposable overalls, old shoes and tools and throw it all away after.Was it worth it.....yes - we converted to VC17 (fresh water on the Great Lakes) and the new smooth botton gained us over a knot extra! Good luck.
C
Chuck Reed
Peel-away is the best
peel-away is found at your local name paint stores. Not menards,or any of them.
peel-away is found at your local name paint stores. Not menards,or any of them.
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Gerry Journeau
Don, I'd have to say that Stu did it the easy way. In my business I run across this all the time and find that careful scraping is just as quick and cleaner than sanding and cheaper than anything else. Last year I did a 38' Sabre by myself in 18 hours. This method really works great when you have a few years build up that's starting to flake off. My recommendation through experience is to use as stiff a scraper as possible. I use a 1 1/2" stiff bladed narrow beveled edge from Home Depot. Start anywhere that the paint is letting go or weak, scrape perpendicular to an edge in a short jarring stroke and you'll be surprised how much paint fractures off with each stroke. With a little practice you should master the technique and not gouge up your bottom with the corners of the scraper. As a comparison another customer who wanted me to strip, barrier coat and bottom paint his 28' sailboat decided to do the stripping himself to save some money. I told him what to use , but he figured that if my little scraper worked good then a carbide bladed paint scrapping tool would work better. Took him three weekends and when he was finished I still had to go back and sand off all the little furrows of paint that were left from this pulling type scraper. Leave a sheet under the area your scraping and when you finish clean up is a snap. Good luck
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