Soda Blasting

[Gulfislander]

I am looking at stripping the hull on my Niagara 31 this spring. I am looking at finding the easiest way. I would like to hear what peoples thoughts are on the diiferent techniques especially Soda Blasting. Thanks in advance.

[floatsome]

I had a great experience with soda blasting last year. Ensure the operator has experience with boats.

[sailingdog]

Properly done, soda blasting can save you a lot of work and remove years of paint down to the gelcoat without harming the fiberglass. It will also leave the gelcoat in pretty good shape for further barrier coating or painting, with minimal prep work needed.

I had it done to my boat two seasons ago and then followed up with a barrier coat and bottom paint.

[BarryL]

Originally Posted by Gulfislander

I am looking at stripping the hull on my Niagara 31 this spring. I am looking at finding the easiest way. I would like to hear what peoples thoughts are on the diiferent techniques especially Soda Blasting. Thanks in advance.

Hello,

What are your goals? Are you trying to remove old paint, paint and gelcoat, open blisters, remove old barrier coat, or something else?

My 'new' boat came with about 20 years of old antifouling paint build up. This was layers of old hard cracked bottom paint. I tried paint removers, sanding, and scraping. The scraping worked, but it was back breaking work.

I gave up and hired a local soda blaster. He did a great job and I had to do minimal work before painting. Another guy in my hard had his hull sand blasted. The sand blasting removed all the paint, but seriously damaged the gelcoat in many places. He had to spend hours filling and fairing his hull.

i definitely can recommend soda blasting to remove old bottom paint.

If you want to see what my boat looked like before and after, go here:

http://www.sailnet.com/forums/gear-m...done-test.html

Barry

[wchevron]

per sailingdog's recommendation, i had my hull soda blasted last year rather than sanded. the price to soda blast was about 1/2 the cost of having the yard sand it. it was blasted in one day and i washed and started painting the next. i would recommend it.

[windship]

I have 20+ blast and epoxy jobs under my belt. Every time I used corn cob.
You can use what you prefer. Maybe soda is easier to get I don't know. I'd be interested in the results.
The reason I'm posting is because some one sounded like they were complaining about having to fill the voids left by the gel coat being blasted off.
You actually want to expose the poorly bonded gel coat and voids because they hold water.
Almost all production boats will have voids. Some worse than others. I did a Bertram 31 once that had less than half of the gel coat left when I was done. The boat was built in Florida, gel coat probably shot on a very humid Friday, left to sit all weekend and then not laid up until Monday.. don't know.
But any way DO expose the voids and then fill them with epoxy and then fair.
(I don't know what I did to change the type. Guess I hit a key or something)

[sailingdog]

Windship's point about small voids being opened by sodablasting or corncob blasting is a good one, I found some small voids in the gelcoat on my boat. However, the amount of time I spent sanding and prepping the hull was negligible compared to what I would have had to do if I had gone and either manually sanded or chemically stripped the hull. Considering what I consider my time to be worth, getting the soda blasting done was very economical. Another, smaller boat, at my marina went the manual route about the same time I started the sodablasting process on my boat. They were still sanding when I was finishing up my barrier coating.

[xort]

can this be a do it yourself job??

[sailingdog]

I guess you could do it yourself...but there are some problems...

First, do you own a soda blasting rig? If not, can you rent one??

Second, do you know where to buy the industrial grade baking soda used in soda blasting?

Third, do you know how to tent the boat to contain the soda and bottom paint? The bottom paint is a heavy metal toxic waste and needs to be disposed of properly, or you can get hit with huge fines.

Fourth, how much is your time worth to you??? Running around and getting all the materials, equipment and supplies, and then tenting the boat and soda blasting it is probably going to take you several days... Is it worth it to you to do that? Or does paying someone to do it make more sense?

Originally Posted by xort

can this be a do it yourself job??

[Gulfislander]

Thanks for all the great info. I am going to try the soda blasting.