Wow Imron can be polished!

[Maine Sail]

Hi All,

Well I'm at it again but this time with a friends boat! I told he & his wife I'd help them buff, polish and wax their fire engine red, Imron painted, Ericson 35-3. Well, we spent most of last Saturday working on Cordelia and the results are amazing. I had never worked with Imron, so I was slightly skeptical, but I have to say this stuff is a dream to work with compared to Awlgrip! When I got there he was telling me how they planed on a new paint job within the next year or two but I think after today they may be able to spend their boat dollars on other boat toys and postpone the paint for a few more years.

We experimented for about a half an hour and settled on 3M Super Duty Marine Rubbing Compound and a 3M foam polishing grade pad not a buffing grade pad. This paint is very hard and Finesse It II barely touched it until we had done a round with the Super Duty and a fine grade pad. This combo worked very well with the hard Imron and left a fairly decent shine.

The 3M Super Duty was followed with a polishing/glazing phase using Presta Chroma 1500 & Presta's blue wool pad. I'm always amazed at the magic of the Presta Chroma 1500 and it's diminishing grit! Chroma 1500 starts out about the same grit as Finesse It II but the grit diminishes to a true glaze saving an entire step! My friends wife then came along behind us with a coat of Collinite #885 Fleet Paste carnuba wax. According to my friend his boat was painted with Imron in 1989 and after today, 18 years later, it looks almost new!


These pictures were taken after buffing & polishing but before the wax was applied!

[resdog]

Impressive. Must have been a good paint job to start with.

[Giulietta]

Halekay...

If I buy the plane ticket and feed you for a week...wanna come over????

Giulietta is coming off the water in the end of May!!!

[Sialia]

Those are impressive results and impressive pictures! Congratulations.

[christyleigh]

Yup.... Imron is really tough stuff. Way back when I had a friend in a body shop and before my cross country drive to CA we did Imron clear over metalic blue - beautiful I passed though a horizontally blowing sand storm in the SW and the day after I got to CA I figured I should wash and wax. Wash yes .... but absolutly no need to wax - it was never waxed and always looked like it had 20 coats. The body shop used to paint the air deflectors above the cabs (good place for the company logo) on the local trailer trucks with Imron because it was the only thing that would take the abuse. If you could call anything 'bullet proof' Imron is it