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I am going to paint my topsides this spring (if it ever gets warm enough). I am going to use flag blue Interlux brightsides. I used Interlux Perfection on the deck, and had trouble if the conditions were not perfect. Anyway, my question is, how perfect does the prep need to be? My Bristol 27 has very fair sides due to the thick hull. There are some scratches I will repair. O/w, am I crazy to go to a dark color in a DIY (roll and tip) paint job?
I did a black paint job with roll and tip using Brightside. USE THE BRUSHING LIQUID! I didn't on the first coat and it didn't flatten out. I hesitated to use it as the day was in the 60's and didn't think I needed the thinning. Wrong. The second coat with the brushing liquid was gorgeous.
I was redoing a black paint job, not going over white, so you may need three coats. I did it alone too. I'd roll a couple of feet with a weenie roller and then tip, always keeping a wet edge.
"Tip" is going over the rolled on paint lightly with a good brush - it flattens out the roller 'stipple' and with the right conditions it 'flows out' to a decent gloss.
I'm going to have a gold cove stripe, and a white boot stripe. I think I might put the boot stripe a little higher than the original, and have a little blue between the white boot stripe and red bottom paint to keep crud off the white. Gold letters on the transom. All kind of old-school.
Don't think so... prep is prep, the advantage of roll and tip is that it's easier for a non-pro to do, you don't need the specialized equipment to spray.
I've painted a couple of boats with Awlgrip using a HVLP spray machine (the kind used to refinish bathtubs), I was satisfied and saved a ton of money but it was in no way a professional job.
Tommays on this site achieved an incredible finish on his Cal 29 with roll and tip.. much better than we got with the spray.
So many more variables when spraying. Hard enuf when when rolling! A perfect spray job is better than roll&tip. A poor spray job may be worse than a bad roll&tip. Plus, your two-part (linear) polyurethanes are extraordinarily dangerous when sprayed -- not a job for the casual amateur.
I HVLP spray single-part, water-based polys every day & can usually get good results. But the larger the workpiece, that harder that is to achieve -- and it took years of practice to become merely competent. One piece of advice, learned the hard way: once you find a finish brand that works for you and your situation -- reasonable to apply with the tools you have, nice appearance, good performance -- stick with it. Changing brands puts you back down on the learning curve.
Prep is the answer. You may see rib lines that you absolutely can't see when white. You really need to fair it out with a long board before you even prime. Good luck. Sounds like a really hard job.
My boat looks great from 8 feet and yes if your the type of person that is going to obsess over every little pockmark you could find many faults with it
I did in fact go form white to desert tan
IMHO you will not be pleased with the durability of the brightsides
The prep is the same it needs to be wax free and then a coat of the right primer
If you thin it correctly and use the rollers like redtree or one of the other in the instructions
The roller is to get and even film of paint
The tipping is really to POP air bubbles and if you leave the paint alone it will do its thing and level out
After my first coat of Brightside doing roll and tip, the finish was not smooth. I called tech support and was given the brushing liquid advice. A sanding and second coat.....what a difference. That was on a Catalina 27. Now with my B 32 I'm considering painting her and wouldn't hesitate to roll and tip that Job. I'm more worried about getting the cove stripe straight and crisp.
I did wide cove and boot striping on my boat last year with two coats of primer and three coat of black Brightsides. It came out okay, but I later realized my technique was lacking. Now that I have a better understanding of the method, I just finished all the removable parts of the boat in advance of painting the decks and cockpit. All of these pieces, done in my basement, came out fantastic. Carefully prepped and carefully executed roll and tip can come out great. Now, a full hull in a dark colour? A little harder but following correct procedures should come out great.
As we've all heard before, the secret to any paint job is the prep.
Prep is the answer. You may see rib lines that you absolutely can't see when white. You really need to fair it out with a long board before you even prime. Good luck. Sounds like a really hard job.
Is there any technique to determine if the sides do have undulations due to ribs? I agree, it would be difficult to see imperfections in a light color.
I think at this point, I am leaning a little more toward using Perfection rather than Brightsides. I assume neither one is really very repairable. I had trouble last summer with painting Perfection on the decks, in that, it dried really dull when in direct sunlight. I have to travel to the boat, so, can't pick perfect days. However, the topsides will not have as direct sunlight.
The best sense for checking for fairness is your fingertips - far more sensitive than your eyes. Doesn't work for long waviness though. If the surface is such that you can't "see" any waviness, sometimes carefully laying a long strip of tape can help define them. You have to be careful to keep the tape "straight" because any wows in the line can look like waves in the hull.
In the end though, the best thing is to sand with a longboard when you are prepping for paint. A true longboard will be at least 6' long and require 2 or 3 people to handle it. That's what you have to do if you want a flawlessly fair hull.
If you're willing to settle for a little less perfection, you can use the pictured board sander, available from auto body supply shops along with the strip sandpaper for it. It's a one man tool and if you sand correctly (crosshatch on the diagonal) it will give you a very good surface - better than the majority of boats out there.
Using alternate colours of primer helps reveal highs & lows as well - a bit like using differing bottom paint to reveal when it's thin.
Apparently you guys have months to stand in the driveway because a hand powered long board has to be about the slowest most labor intensive device ever made
Once your trying to fair large areas of fiberglass it is some tough stuff
Even when i was using the air powered long board it was forever and a little bit more
Apparently you guys have months to stand in the driveway because a hand powered long board has to be about the slowest most labor intensive device ever made
Once your trying to fair large areas of fiberglass it is some tough stuff
Even when i was using the air powered long board it was forever and a little bit more
It's what you have to do if you want a Flag Blue or black hull to look really good - there's no easy way to accomplish it. That's one of the reasons most boats are white. An air board sander is a poor choice for this job - it's designed to flatten surfaces like a belt sander. It's far too rigid for compound curves. You'd be better off using a big rotary with a thick, medium soft foam pad.
Apparently you guys have months to stand in the driveway because a hand powered long board has to be about the slowest most labor intensive device ever made.
The solution is to do a paint job that makes sense from a time and money standpoint
You will absolutely never get that hull fair enough so that flag blue does NOT show every imperfection
The filling thing is in it self problematic in that you have this giant twisting hunk of fiberglass that at some point in the future is going to eject any filler that was not done just exactly perfect
Using a RO sander is likely to leave highs and lows, esp if you're not careful how you try to take off high filler spots... don't ask how I know this....
I agree totally that if you want flag blue to look good the hull has to be PERFECT, esp if you're able to achieve a high gloss finish. You could try something like Whisper Grey.. a more forgiving colour but different enough to stand out amongst the other bleach bottles..
We're actually in the middle of this exact task right now! First, we decided to lighten ours just a tad using the white Brightsides we had for our deck. We've been roll and tipping with another roller, not a brush and have had great results so far. We're two coats in right now. We'll likely need to do 4 coats as it's hard to cover the white evenly. If you haven't started yet I would recommend you tint the primer. Get your hull as fair as possible and sand the hell out of it - dark paint shows any imperfections. Our boat is in Florida and we've been painting only when it's 60+ degrees and winds less than 9mph. Word of advice, don't use any accelerator as Brightsides is chemically designed to dry slower and spread out to avoid the orange peel look - or so Interlux told us.
I'll post pics for you once she's done. We've been taking them after each coat. We must be doing something right as a bunch of boaters have stopped by and told us the paint job looks great already.
I'm also planning on painting the topsides this spring. Curious if anyone has used Interlux Perfection. Is the application the same as Brightsides? I'm going to keep the hull, deck and cockpit white. The non-skid areas will be light gray or blue.
I did this project 4 years ago with Perfection and was very happy with the results. Yes you can see imperfections when you get close, but she looks beautiful from a distance. I removed all hardware and did the deck and topsides in one spring project. Had the boat inside and had three people to do the job. After weeks of prep work each coat of roll and tip took 45 minutes to do a 28' boat. Used scaffolding on wheels to move the 'tipper'.
One of my earliest lessons in boat maintenance was that boats should look good from 10', not 1' away. Those of us with high intensity OCD want our boats to look as good as cars.
It's a virtually impossible goal with a sailboat. A little more possible with power since they can be kept in boathouses.
Barquito, your color scheme sounds a lot like mine (minus the red bottom). This is Awlgrip ... instead of Flag Blue, it's Carinthia Blue (a little bluer than blacker).
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