When I decided to restore my boat (1984 Checkmate Enforcer O/B), I read many forum posts from many different sites, and bought a couple of books and videos. What I discovered during this restoration is, either everyone is much better at this then I am, or people tend to forget the unpleasant parts.
I suspect the latter. The threads that go along the lines of, "Just cut out the old floor and slap a new one in." are leaving out a few things.
Since there are enough step-by-step "how to" sources that show how to do it the right way, I figured it would be more useful to describe a first-timer?s restoration from what I would consider to be a more realistic perspective. With all the pitfalls and dumb mistakes fully revealed.
I?m still not quite done, but I?m close enough.
My background: Although certainly nowhere near a pro, I?d say I?m more experienced than the average person with hand and power tools.
I?ll present my restoration experience as three separate threads, one for each of the following tasks; paint, floor, and cockpit.
If you don?t want to read the whole post that follows then skip to the bottom to see the What I Learned and If I Had To Do It Over Again bullet points.
Paint
When I bought the boat it was off-white with (too) bright blue trim and black bottom paint (pictures later). I knew I wanted a bright white base coat, no windshield, a blacked-out windscreen area, wind deflectors and no bow rail. I thought I wanted graphics or something else on the sides, but to this day, I still haven?t decided ? except that graphics are probably out, so it?ll be "something else". And it won?t happen until next year.
After peeling off a vinyl stripe that ran around the entire boat using label remover and a plastic putty knife (a pain because it broke about every couple of inches or so), and removing the residue with Goo Gone, I moved on to the real work.
The first step was to have the bottom paint sandblasted. After blasting, the bottom looked to be in good shape, with just a few small pockmarks here and there. After filling the pockmarks, I divided the boat into two parts; above the rub rail, and below. I decided to attack below the rub rail first. I sanded the hull using 150 grit with a Skil DA orbital sander hooked to a ShopVac Mini. It was much more work than the 2 minutes it took the guy on the video
. Given all the chine angles and other nooks that had to be hand sanded it took almost 4 hours to sand the entire hull.
The boat was under a tree, which afforded me the shade I needed to paint, but which obviously presented other issues. The last couple of feet of the boat were sticking out in the mid-day sun, and from the paint results on that part I know it was much better to deal with ants falling out of the tree than a boat surface temperature hot enough to cook an egg. I fried paint a couple of times when I hit it the wrong time of the day. I had to paint around the movement of the sun. If I were doing this at home, I would set up a canopy.
Now to choose a painting methodology?
After reading many forum posts on the topic and watching an Interlux video I decided to go with roll-and-tip. I started with Pettite Easypoxy Undercoater. I choose Easypoxy as my paint because of many reviews and a video I watched comparing Easypoxy, Brightside and Epiphanes. Before sanding, I washed the boat with Soft Scrub and water then rubbed it down with Interlux 202. This stuff eats through latex and nitrile gloves. After sanding, I washed it down again with plain water. I dried it with a chamois then went over it with a tack cloth. I applied the Undercoater with a high-density foam roller and tipped it with a Purdy brush. What a disaster. Noticeable overlapping of edges and brush marks like the Grand Canyon. I attributed it to the breezy conditions making it set up too fast. I used 150 grit again and wound up sanding almost the whole thing off. Next coat produced brush marks again, but not as bad. After sanding with 220 I thinned some Easypoxy gloss white and rolled-and-tipped. The brush marks were small on one side, but unacceptable on the other. Maybe because of the temperature of the hull due to the sun?s position, more breeze from the North ? who knows? I sanded that down with 220. I went over it quickly with 3M Pro 180 on a sanding block to flatten it out. The next couple of coats were tipped with good quality Jen foam brushes. I found that this was far better than a regular brush, but still left brush marks. Before the final roll-and-tip coat, I tried 320 grit alone ? no difference. Roll-and-tip just wasn?t acceptable for me. I was sanding most of it off because of the brush marks. And I wasn?t going to spend $30 on a badger brush because I just didn?t believe it would make that much of a difference. Also the pro at my marina (20+ years experience) said that while he had seen nice roll-and tip jobs, he never got the hang of it, so he always sprayed. It seems that roll-and-tip has an inherent Goldilocks problem. If I could get the right temperature, wind speed, amount of thinner, humidity and God knows what other variables just right, maybe I could get a smooth finish. Well, I didn?t have any experience spraying, but I did have a lot of experience rolling paint at the house. Besides, everyone said this rolling stuff came out looking just like spraying ? so on to approach number two ?
I read a post somewhere about roll-and-roll. In this technique, you apply the paint with a roller (again, high density foam) then "tip" with a dry roller using no pressure. I gave it a try on the bottom and it came out pretty good. On the sides of the hull, it looked very good. Almost no roller marks and slight orange peel. The front deck was a different story. Lots of roller marks, but again, acceptable orange peel. Maybe gravity had something to do with it because all three coats came out good on the hull and not so good on the front deck. Something was different about the flow. I used the same amount of thinner on both (about 15-20%).
I still had the cockpit, blacked-out windscreen and splash well to paint and there were a lot of nooks and crannies I didn?t know how I?d get to with a roller. So I decided to spray those with a Preval sprayer. This came out with a heavy orange peel, but at least it covered everything well and I could spray several coats in one day without sanding in between, unlike the "paint one day, sand the whole boat the next" with the roll methods. I decided to roll the dash with the next coat because the dash is what I?ll be looking at the most and I wanted it to have a pristine finish. The orange peel of the black windscreen was so noticeable that I sanded through three coats of spray in places to get rid of it. I decided to do the next coat on the windscreen with roll-and-roll, which came out much smoother. Also, the Preval spray was not as shiny as the roller methods ? until I wet sanded and buffed. However, later I did a few touch-up spritzes with the Preval on the front deck after wet sanding and those came out as smooth and shiny as glass. Whether that had to do with a touch more thinner or the fact that it was 75̊ instead of 90+̊, I don?t know. I also don?t know whether there is any "tooth" on a 1200 grit sanded area, we?ll see.
Due to using cheap tape to hold down the masking paper, I over-sprayed the black in places, and the edges were feathered here and there, possibly from keeping the masking tape on for a week. That necessitated taping over the outline of the windscreen, and then spraying more white.
All these unknowns or errors really eat your time.
Wet sanding was actually the only thing that went relatively smooth. The pro recommended starting with 800 grit, then no more than 1500, and then buffing. I started on the cockpit first so I could have it buffed out before installing the u-channel edge molding (I made another mistake with this molding but you?ll have to read the cockpit post for that oneJ). After I saw the results with 800 I decided on 1200 for the second pass. Of course, I sanded through an edge on the dash with the 800 and had to spray part of it again. I also hit the hull with 800 to take out the orange peel, then 1200. That took about five hours. That?s just for the sides of the hull, not the bottom. I decided to speed it up by trying Abralon 1000 grit discs on the DA sander on the front deck. That didn?t work. The discs wore out quickly and didn?t do much to remove the orange peel, so I went back to hand sanding. The roller marks were heavy enough on the front deck that I dropped down to 600 grit.
I?m using a cut-off sanding sponge and wrapping the wet/dry sandpaper around it. I?m spraying a water solution that contains a few drops of Dawn dish detergent, while swishing the sponge/paper in a bucket of water. Except for the sanding sponge part, I learned this from watching cars being wet sanded on YouTube.
I?m buffing using Mequiar?s Marine One-Step Compound, with a 3M Hookit wool buffing pad and a Harbor Freight buffer. The pad does not fit well on the buffer?s backing plate and vibrates if not centered precisely, which is almost impossible to do. However, the results have been great. I?ve included a couple of pictures (more later). In these pictures, below the rub rail has been compounded. Above the rail has only been wet sanded once with 800.
http://i1020.photobucket.com/albums/af321/CheckSmitty/CIMG0193.jpg?t=1284635010
http://i1020.photobucket.com/albums/af321/CheckSmitty/CIMG0194.jpg?t=1284635010
What I Learned:
If I Had To Do It Over Again:
I suspect the latter. The threads that go along the lines of, "Just cut out the old floor and slap a new one in." are leaving out a few things.
Since there are enough step-by-step "how to" sources that show how to do it the right way, I figured it would be more useful to describe a first-timer?s restoration from what I would consider to be a more realistic perspective. With all the pitfalls and dumb mistakes fully revealed.
I?m still not quite done, but I?m close enough.
My background: Although certainly nowhere near a pro, I?d say I?m more experienced than the average person with hand and power tools.
I?ll present my restoration experience as three separate threads, one for each of the following tasks; paint, floor, and cockpit.
If you don?t want to read the whole post that follows then skip to the bottom to see the What I Learned and If I Had To Do It Over Again bullet points.
Paint
When I bought the boat it was off-white with (too) bright blue trim and black bottom paint (pictures later). I knew I wanted a bright white base coat, no windshield, a blacked-out windscreen area, wind deflectors and no bow rail. I thought I wanted graphics or something else on the sides, but to this day, I still haven?t decided ? except that graphics are probably out, so it?ll be "something else". And it won?t happen until next year.
After peeling off a vinyl stripe that ran around the entire boat using label remover and a plastic putty knife (a pain because it broke about every couple of inches or so), and removing the residue with Goo Gone, I moved on to the real work.
The first step was to have the bottom paint sandblasted. After blasting, the bottom looked to be in good shape, with just a few small pockmarks here and there. After filling the pockmarks, I divided the boat into two parts; above the rub rail, and below. I decided to attack below the rub rail first. I sanded the hull using 150 grit with a Skil DA orbital sander hooked to a ShopVac Mini. It was much more work than the 2 minutes it took the guy on the video
. Given all the chine angles and other nooks that had to be hand sanded it took almost 4 hours to sand the entire hull.The boat was under a tree, which afforded me the shade I needed to paint, but which obviously presented other issues. The last couple of feet of the boat were sticking out in the mid-day sun, and from the paint results on that part I know it was much better to deal with ants falling out of the tree than a boat surface temperature hot enough to cook an egg. I fried paint a couple of times when I hit it the wrong time of the day. I had to paint around the movement of the sun. If I were doing this at home, I would set up a canopy.
Now to choose a painting methodology?
After reading many forum posts on the topic and watching an Interlux video I decided to go with roll-and-tip. I started with Pettite Easypoxy Undercoater. I choose Easypoxy as my paint because of many reviews and a video I watched comparing Easypoxy, Brightside and Epiphanes. Before sanding, I washed the boat with Soft Scrub and water then rubbed it down with Interlux 202. This stuff eats through latex and nitrile gloves. After sanding, I washed it down again with plain water. I dried it with a chamois then went over it with a tack cloth. I applied the Undercoater with a high-density foam roller and tipped it with a Purdy brush. What a disaster. Noticeable overlapping of edges and brush marks like the Grand Canyon. I attributed it to the breezy conditions making it set up too fast. I used 150 grit again and wound up sanding almost the whole thing off. Next coat produced brush marks again, but not as bad. After sanding with 220 I thinned some Easypoxy gloss white and rolled-and-tipped. The brush marks were small on one side, but unacceptable on the other. Maybe because of the temperature of the hull due to the sun?s position, more breeze from the North ? who knows? I sanded that down with 220. I went over it quickly with 3M Pro 180 on a sanding block to flatten it out. The next couple of coats were tipped with good quality Jen foam brushes. I found that this was far better than a regular brush, but still left brush marks. Before the final roll-and-tip coat, I tried 320 grit alone ? no difference. Roll-and-tip just wasn?t acceptable for me. I was sanding most of it off because of the brush marks. And I wasn?t going to spend $30 on a badger brush because I just didn?t believe it would make that much of a difference. Also the pro at my marina (20+ years experience) said that while he had seen nice roll-and tip jobs, he never got the hang of it, so he always sprayed. It seems that roll-and-tip has an inherent Goldilocks problem. If I could get the right temperature, wind speed, amount of thinner, humidity and God knows what other variables just right, maybe I could get a smooth finish. Well, I didn?t have any experience spraying, but I did have a lot of experience rolling paint at the house. Besides, everyone said this rolling stuff came out looking just like spraying
? so on to approach number two ?I read a post somewhere about roll-and-roll. In this technique, you apply the paint with a roller (again, high density foam) then "tip" with a dry roller using no pressure. I gave it a try on the bottom and it came out pretty good. On the sides of the hull, it looked very good. Almost no roller marks and slight orange peel. The front deck was a different story. Lots of roller marks, but again, acceptable orange peel. Maybe gravity had something to do with it because all three coats came out good on the hull and not so good on the front deck. Something was different about the flow. I used the same amount of thinner on both (about 15-20%).
I still had the cockpit, blacked-out windscreen and splash well to paint and there were a lot of nooks and crannies I didn?t know how I?d get to with a roller. So I decided to spray those with a Preval sprayer. This came out with a heavy orange peel, but at least it covered everything well and I could spray several coats in one day without sanding in between, unlike the "paint one day, sand the whole boat the next" with the roll methods. I decided to roll the dash with the next coat because the dash is what I?ll be looking at the most and I wanted it to have a pristine finish. The orange peel of the black windscreen was so noticeable that I sanded through three coats of spray in places to get rid of it. I decided to do the next coat on the windscreen with roll-and-roll, which came out much smoother. Also, the Preval spray was not as shiny as the roller methods ? until I wet sanded and buffed. However, later I did a few touch-up spritzes with the Preval on the front deck after wet sanding and those came out as smooth and shiny as glass. Whether that had to do with a touch more thinner or the fact that it was 75̊ instead of 90+̊, I don?t know. I also don?t know whether there is any "tooth" on a 1200 grit sanded area, we?ll see.
Due to using cheap tape to hold down the masking paper, I over-sprayed the black in places, and the edges were feathered here and there, possibly from keeping the masking tape on for a week. That necessitated taping over the outline of the windscreen, and then spraying more white.
All these unknowns or errors really eat your time.
Wet sanding was actually the only thing that went relatively smooth. The pro recommended starting with 800 grit, then no more than 1500, and then buffing. I started on the cockpit first so I could have it buffed out before installing the u-channel edge molding (I made another mistake with this molding but you?ll have to read the cockpit post for that oneJ). After I saw the results with 800 I decided on 1200 for the second pass. Of course, I sanded through an edge on the dash with the 800 and had to spray part of it again. I also hit the hull with 800 to take out the orange peel, then 1200. That took about five hours. That?s just for the sides of the hull, not the bottom. I decided to speed it up by trying Abralon 1000 grit discs on the DA sander on the front deck. That didn?t work. The discs wore out quickly and didn?t do much to remove the orange peel, so I went back to hand sanding. The roller marks were heavy enough on the front deck that I dropped down to 600 grit.
I?m using a cut-off sanding sponge and wrapping the wet/dry sandpaper around it. I?m spraying a water solution that contains a few drops of Dawn dish detergent, while swishing the sponge/paper in a bucket of water. Except for the sanding sponge part, I learned this from watching cars being wet sanded on YouTube.
I?m buffing using Mequiar?s Marine One-Step Compound, with a 3M Hookit wool buffing pad and a Harbor Freight buffer. The pad does not fit well on the buffer?s backing plate and vibrates if not centered precisely, which is almost impossible to do. However, the results have been great. I?ve included a couple of pictures (more later). In these pictures, below the rub rail has been compounded. Above the rail has only been wet sanded once with 800.
http://i1020.photobucket.com/albums/af321/CheckSmitty/CIMG0193.jpg?t=1284635010
http://i1020.photobucket.com/albums/af321/CheckSmitty/CIMG0194.jpg?t=1284635010
What I Learned:
- Sanding just the hull takes 3 - 4 hours and really wears out your shoulders. That?s for EACH coat of paint or primer if you roll it. And wet sanding the finish coat twice by hand took a lot longer than that. I?ve sanded the hull alone seven times.
- Roll-and-tip doesn?t work for me. I could never get the brush marks out.
- Roll-and-roll can work when gravity is on your side. Regardless, it?s much better than roll-and-tip.
- Sandpaper cost with rolling is about $100. If you?re going to roll, buy your sanding discs in bulk.
- Buy good sandpaper. In the long run it costs less because it lasts longer. I like 3M paper, especially their wet/dry. Don?t buy the wet/dry that Harbor Freight carries. The particles come off the HF paper and turn your sanding area black, but the 3M does not.
- Sanding with the DA sander too close to raised edges goes through the paint very easily. I had to do many primer and paint touch-ups.
- Don?t use cheap tape. I taped off the blacked-out windscreen with good 3M green auto masking tape, but thought I could get away with cheap dollar store tape to tape the paper down around it. It rose up in places and I got some overspray.
- Removing hardware is a major pain. I had to use an impact driver on several bow rail screws. Two of them sheared off and I had to drill them out. When I removed the windshield, about a third of the bolts sheared off from rust. It took a couple of hours just to get the windshield off. Removing the gauges took much more time than I expected due to cramped access. Even taping off the hardware you leave (in my case, tabs, hatch, cleats, pitot, steering, bow and transom eyes) takes a good bit of time.
- You need a lot of stuff to paint a boat. Paint, primer, thinner, fiberglass de-waxer, various grades of sandpaper, mixing sticks, paint tray, 20 paint tray liners, safety glasses, respirator (Interlux 202 and acetone are nasty), paint brushes, DA sander, sanding block (don?t buy the one at Ace, it?s a pain to load ? get a 3M), vacuum (love my little $26 ShopVac Mini Hangup), mineral spirits, latex gloves (I?ve gone through 100 on this restore), rags, a handful of tack cloths, 20-30 high density foam rollers (4- and 2-inch worked best for me), Preval sprayers, stuff to wash the boat with, compound, buffer, a good wool pad, ?
- Marine-Tex and Interlux Surfacing Putty tends to sink down into gouges and screw holes when drying. I had to apply it twice. Better to mound it up. This affected my painting schedule a couple of times.
- I had to use sandpaper on the rollers in order to get the next session?s roller covers to roll smoothly. Even though I had wiped the paint off there was still something there that was impeding a smooth roll. I took a piece of sandpaper in my closed fist and twirled the roller in it.
- Rubbing alcohol is a safe and easy way to get polyurethane paint off your skin.
If I Had To Do It Over Again:
- I?d get a exceptional spray gun and either a good compressor or HVLP turbine and spray the whole boat over a few days. It would have saved weeks of sanding. Sanding was the biggest time-consumer and by far the most exhausting physical activity of the project. Sanding a whole 24-foot boat seven times is not my idea of fun, and my shoulders really paid for it.
- I would have bought stuff as I needed it. Instead, I bought a lot of stuff up front that I never used just because forum posts or videos said I needed it.
- If I didn?t buy a nice sprayer/compressor/turbine (probably $800-1,000), which I probably wouldn?t if this was the only project I would use it for, I might actually consider doing the whole boat with my cheap $75 Harbor Freight sprayer system, or even a bunch of Prevals sprayed over maybe 600-800 grit sanded. Whether that has enough "tooth" ? I guess I?d find out, but any kind of spraying would be far less work than rolling, even if I had to spray again over a coarser grit.
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