Hull refinishing

[loomaz]

This past spring I purchased a Rhodes 18 which was manufactured in 1957. The guy I bought it from did refurbished it somewhat but paint he used to refinish the hull is peeling off in spots. The paint he used was an Interlux brand and I would like to refinish the peeling areas this spring. Any suggestions for how best to do this? I would also like to refinish the teak decking and trim. Any suggestionss for what to use to remove the old varnish and refinish with new?

[camaraderie]

If you want to do the paint right...sand it all down and fair the hull with wet sandpaper 400 grit...clean with solvent and then apply a primer coat. From there you have a choice of paints that range from cheap alkyd based to polyurethanes to 2-part paints like awlgrip. As you pay more...you get higher gloss and more durability..all depends on what you want to spend. That is a classic boat though and I would suggest at least a polyurethane.

Removing old varnish is best done with a heat gun and a sharp scraper or chisel. Refinishing...sand teak lightly with 200 grit. Clean with mineral spirits. Coat with good quality spar varnish slightly thinned for first coat penetration. After that sand very lightly with each coat and do not thin the varnish. Final coat should be wetsanded with 400+ grit before hand and wiped down. How many coats? Somewhere between 4 and 7 or until you are happy! Use a good bristle brush and go slowly.
OR... if you don't care about the classic look...Grab a pint of Cetol Regular and Cetol gloss. After sanding and wiping with 200 grit...apply Cetol one coat. After it dries...Apply 2 coats of gloss. Looks pretty damn good and avoids a lot of work and you can touch it up without re-doing it.
Have fun on your classic!

[Faster]

Having been through a similar project - but on a 40 footer - on the topic of sanding I'd add this:

Your technique has to be good, and patience is a virtue. We had to sand paint and primer (the failed bond was between the primer and whatever the paint was that was applied by the PO) Since we didn't know what the primer was either, we elected to get if off as well.

As it turned out the primer was really on there, and in the course of sanding it off with random orbital sanders, patience wore thin and techniques became more aggressive.

As a result, after spending a small fortune on sanding pads/paper, we then spent considerable time (and money - Epifill doesn't come cheap) attempting to re-fair the hull. In hindsight I'd have tried some other method of paint removal, even if apparently more costly.

On a project like yours, there's a lot less area to deal with, and you may be able to avoid our problems. Using a longboard and doing things by hand may be the safest, but slowest way to do it.

Ultimately we ended up with an Awlgripped hull that looked 100 times better than before, but I was never able to drift by in the dinghy without seeing the spots we didn't quite get right. (Few others noticed, though)

[1970Columbia34]

Faster when you Awlgripped your hull did you do roll and tip or did you spray it? We are in the process of getting our boat ready to spray between Christmas and New Years. We are doing a Aristo Blue Topsides with Snow White stripes and deck, with a light gray non-skid. We will be spraying with a HVLP Turbin system.

Loomaz I suggest getting ahold of awlgrip and having them send you and application guide there is a section that goes through testing your existing surface for its strength, telling you if you need to sand it all off or if you can re coat over the top.

Scott

[Faster]

Columbia - we used the same HVLP turbine system to spray. (Fuji). It worked well with minimal overspray, but the result was not totally professional looking - gloss was not the same as a pro job nearby. The biggest advantage is the warm air used to paint, and the absolute lack of oil in the air.

For the nonskid on the deck we bought a large bore nozzle for it, mixed the Griptex (course/medium grit 50/50) into the paint, and added a couple of ball bearings into the spray pot to help keep it agitated. That worked very well. We painted the non-nonskid areas first, then masked off the non skid and sprayed that. You really only get one shot at the deck since you can hardly walk on it for the second pass. Also the spray pot has a vent - you have to fashion a collar to catch the drippings because of the angle of the gun when spraying the deck.

We also sprayed the rig. This turned out really nice - it was the last thing we did, so we were getting the hang of it, and also we were advised to go as thin as possible because of the flexibility of the mast, in the end the finish was excellent.

The nonskid areas ended up looking great - uniform coverage and attractive, but not the most effective in all conditions. It seemed to improve with time as the initially fresh painted nonskid was quite slick when wet.

In the end we redid the entire boat, topsides, deck, plus the annual bottom paint for around $5-6K Cdn (1996) for materials... compared to $20K or more for a pro job.

I'd keep the nonskid colour lighter rather than dark - very hot underfoot otherwise.

[sailortjk1]

What ever you do, don't ask a Mexican or a teenager to help you. You'll get blasted on Sailnet.

[1970Columbia34]

Faster, I was wondering what you used for the reducer when you painted? We plan to paint the non-skid areas using the Interlex Interdeck. We going to mix 3qts of Gray and 1qt of white for our final color. Were going to paint the white areas of the deck first then come back and do the non-skid.

What color did you do your boat and from you post, it looks like its been 10 years since you did this job. Do you think the reason for the lack of gloss was the fact you used to fast of a reducer and the warm air the turbine produces caused the paint to flash off to fast?

Scott

[Faster]

I'll PM you