Re: 1979 22' Starcraft SuperSport V5 Restoration
Well I took the afternoon off today to lay some vinyl since its looking like the last warm day for probably a long time. First I tied the carpet up with wire to not be in the way then positioned the vinyl I had cut.
Troweled on some adhesive...
And here we are now...
When I went to cut the vinyl to the correct shape, I threw the whole big rectangle piece into the boat. Up in the bow it obviously was folded and bent. Well this put a few creases into it that wouldn't quite lay flat on their own, hence the weight that's on it now. I used a 75lb vinyl roller on the whole thing then installed all the perimeter trim and access ring and ski locker trim. It looked good. I shut the doors and windows and turned the heat on in the garage to 70. We then left for dinner cause its my wife's birthday. Came back a couple hours later and I had a couple air bubbles under the vinyl. I took an awl and poked them and pressed the vinyl back down and set some weight on then.
I'm 50/50 whether this is going to turn out. I don't have a great feeling that all is well between the vinyl and deck. I did do a test piece this morning before I started because I wanted to make sure I had the right size notch on my trowel. I did a test with the recommended size and it was obvious to me it was too small (3/32x3/32 v-notch). The adhesive got all soaked up into the backing. I then went up a size to 1/8x1/8x1/16 v-notch and this seemed a lot better. When I lifted the sample, there was adhesive on both sides. So that's the one I used. So, not sure if I have enough or if too much or if this combination of vinyl and adhesive over epoxy is compatible. Not sure cause I've never done it before. The recommended adhesive is latex based and from everything I've read it would never dry under vinyl. Maybe I should have used contact cement, I don't know. If I end up peeling this all up, the vinyl will be junk and carpet will be going down. Carpet is easy.
So now I sit and wait and worry.
It does look nice against the carpet though...