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Exterior Refinishing |
This is what can be achieved with a thirty-four year old, slightly stained, scratched and dull hull. Shown here is the starboard side, which this morning looked nothing like this. I've left the port side untouched and over the next few website updates I'll show how I got the hull to this condition. Right now I'm gonna' have a hot bath because I hurt everywhere. |
This is what the transom* of Tomorrow's Girl looks like after being painted ....with a roller. Yes, a roller. The paint used was Interlux Brightsides one part urethane. Off White is the colour which I found to be an acceptable match to my boat's hull. The transom had to be repainted to cover some patching I had to do to fill a number of holes left by a previous owner's installation of a VHF antenna. |
"By the time this job is completed, you'll consider Ibuprofen one of the major food groups." |
I have to say I was very surprized how well the paint turned out and how easy it was to get a near perfect finish. After I had made the repairs to the fibreglass, I wiped the surface with acetone and then gave it a scrubbing with a great product called Krud Kutter that I found at Home Despot in the paint sundries department, it's non-toxic, bio-degradable, leaves no residue and it really, really works! Then I applied the first of three coats of paint using a roll and tip method with a Whizz brand closed cell foam roller and a 2.5" Purdy china bristle sash brush. I wet-sanded lightly with 600 grit paper on a rubber block between coats, letting the paint dry overnight. After the third and final coat had cured for a few days I wet-sanded again with 600, then 1000, and finally 1200 grit. All this was followed by power buffing with Meguiar's #45 Marine and RV polish which in my opinion is a superior product to 3M Finesse It for this application. Once I have the rest of the hull work done I'll seal it all with Meguiar's Flagship Yacht Wax. |
A rollered-on paint finish! |
Fixing a bad repair job. Collision damage "repaired" with Bondo (left) Previously repaired section cut out and fixed properly, with five layers of epoxy and cloth, shown here faired and ready for paint (right). Note that the rubrail and silver vinyl stripe have been removed. When I pulled off the silver stripe, some of the painted blue stripe came off with it, revealing the original red stripe which on early boats is actually part of the gelcoat and not just surface applied. |
Exhaust hole enlarged to accomodate larger 2" exhaust and stainless thru-hull. Holes cut and drilled to fit new Perko transom light. |
All the rubrail holes epoxy filled, only to be re-drilled and polysulphied when the rail goes back on. |
Transom after three coats of Interlux Brightsides polyurethane, wet sanded to 600 between coats and buffed with Mequiar's #2 machine glaze, yellow pad on the Porter Cable 7424 (great buffer!) |
Holes in the transom from the previous owner's VHF antenna installation have been filled and blocked and it's ready for paint. The new antenna will be mounted on the masthead where it belongs. |
Rewind to the beginning...Below are the steps I had to go through in order to end up with the hull looking the way it does in the photos shown above. |
My weapons of choice... Left, rotary buffer with adjustable speed and a maximum of 3000 RPM for cutting and polishing. Middle, Porter Cable 7424 dual action buffer for finer work or polishing. Right, the Christmas gift from the kids which really only has enough power to remove excess wax. |
My chemicals of choice... Left, 3M Finnesse It Next, Meguiar's #47 Oxidation Remover and Meguiar's Flagship Yacht Wax Right, Krud Kutter cleaner and degreaser which I also used 75% diluted for wet sanding. |
Port side before, Starboard side after. |
First step is to wet sand the entire length of the boat, I start with 600 grit, working in a horizontal / vertical / horizontal fashion starting at the pointy end of the boat. By the time I get to the blunt end of the boat I've pretty much lost all feeling in the right side of my upper body. and since that was so much fun I'll repeat the process with 1000 grit. The objective is to get the gelcoat to a uniform dull surface by removing a microscopic layer of gelcoat. During this process I'm finding a few docking souvenirs in the way of gouges that will require special attention later. |
Here's the results after using the rotary buffer with the Mequiar's Oxydation Remover. This side took about 45 minutes and 1/3 bottle of polish. I have some gelcoat patching to do then those areas will be re-polished prior to waxing. |
Polishing is complete except for the spots that need gelcoat repair, here the bootstripe has been taped out for painting. |
Cockpit freshly painted except where the old instrument panel will be glassed in. I've decided not to re-install the teak "eyebrow" trim pieces on the main bulkhead. They're purely cosmetic and in my opinion their removal really updates the look of the cockpit. |
Utilizing some leftover plexiglas from the side window project I've cut windows into the comanionway hatch boards, I rabetted the plexi and fabricated some interior retaining collars from 1/2" Sintra. The assembly is held in place with stainless screws and some black Sikaflex. To refinish the boards they were stripped and recoated with five coats of Interlux Goldspar. Inside looking out. |
New grabrails fabricated from 4/4 teak and finished with Interlux Goldspar. After shopping for the teak, fabricating, sanding and finishing these myself, I figure I've saved at least five bucks over ordering replacements from Catalina Direct. |
New grabrails sealed with butyl tape, and polysulphide on the screws. Installation of these things is definitely a two person job. |
For those of you who are counting; yes the grabrail is one loop short. I figured there was no need for the rail to extend underneath the dodger. |
Additional exterior refinishing projects shown below. |
This is what the aluminum rubrail extrusion looked like where the collision damage used to be. I'm not going to this much work and put that piece of junk back on. All the aluminum along the port side has been replaced along with new rubrail vinyl all around, as shown below left and below. |
I've found evidence of a handful of blisters that need to be repaired; not any surprize on a boat this old. Tommorrow's Girl has been out of the water for ten months now and she won't likely be this dry again for years to come. This is a prime opportunity to apply a layer of Interlux Interprotect Epoxy, it's a huge job to strip the entire hull below the waterline, but in my mind it's a job worth doing. This should help in preventing more blistering for a number of years. |
Hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of sanding. |
Shown below: The first of what will be four coats of epoxy, alternating coats of white and grey to confirm coverage. Too bad it'll be covered with anti-fouling paint! |
In order to sand, epoxy and bottomcoat the areas covered by the pads, I had to replicate the fore and aft stands in areas that were already finished and then dismantle the existing stands. I was sweatin' bullets when I knocked the first of the old posts out! The boat stayed vertical and the side of the house didn't get crushed...phew. |
Now to attend to those docking souvenirs that couldn't be fixed just by buffing... Here I'm opening up the nicks with a Dremel in preparation for gelcoat paste. With my boat being thirty-four years old, there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting an off the shelf colour* match. I found that white gelcoat mixed with a combination of Yellow and Raw Umber pigments resulted in a nearly perfect match. |
*not bad at spelling, just Canadian. |
Re-installing the teak canopy rails, original .375" teak plugs holes were messed-up during the removal of the old plugs so the plug holes were over-drilled with a .5" Forstner bit and new plugs were cut from scrap with a plug cutter. Once the glue on the plugs is dry, the plugs will be cut flush with a back-saw, sanded and varnished. |
*Just to correct some misunderstanding by previous viewers, only the transom was painted, the rest of the hull is the original fibreglass. |