Re: Oh man!!!
If you think old house paint is bad on fiberglass, try getting it off of an aluminum boat. I've been working on stripping off several coats of latex which has the texture of a dry lake bed. The former owner apparently stripped, primed, and painted it with house paint, then repainted every year over the crackling paint. Luckily over time, most of it has all but fallen off, in the year I've had the boat, about 50% has begun to peel bad enough that I can scrape a good bit of it off with a credit card. Its the little bits that remain that are the challenge. Goof Off, Goo Gone, and other solvents do nothing for it once it's this dry and cracked. Even aircraft stripper don't seem to touch it. The old owner even left two cans of the stuff in the boat for future touch up, MAB Seashore house paint, in both white and burnt sienna, (his version of bottom paint I guess). There's even a 7" broom/ or brush that came with it. The one thing that saved me some work is that he never sanded or prepped the aluminum and it's natural inability to hold paint and time seem to be working with me. I got the boat from a surviving relative, so I never got to speak to the owner himself, but from the look of things, he must have been a builder or house painter. he built the interior and seat boxes from 2x12" lumber, the deck was done over in 5/4 board decking, and the seats were made from 3/4" plywood with home made seat cushions. There's also a boarding ladder that weighs about 100lbs that was in the boat also made from 2x12s. All were coated with many layers of latex house paint. In a way it worked in that the underlying aluminum is well preserved, I just have to do some digging to find it.
