Re: 1979 22' Starcraft SuperSport V5 Restoration
Quick recap about this fiasco. Saturday I did the carpet onto the hull sides. Went beautifully, turned out great, could not be happier. Yesterday, tried the vinyl with the same glue. The vinyl has a felt backing and I did some tests to get the right amount of adhesive, not enough and the felt would soak it all up and the bond was not very good. With the right amount, when I pulled it up there would be adhesive on both halves.
So I troweled out half the deck, probably took 10-15 minutes, and laid half the vinyl, folded it over, troweled the other half and laid the rest. I was pretty careful to keep the adhesive even all over. I then had one of those vinyl flooring rollers that weighs at least 75lbs and rolled it in a bunch of different directions. All looked good. I then went and put all the trim down. All still looked good. A few hours later I noticed a couple small bubbles so I poked them with an awl and pushed them back down. This worried me a little. This morning I get up and check and theres a big bubble, and a few more smaller ones. Go to work and come home and they are still there along with some more up in the bow. I pulled of all the trim and started rolling. They would not roll out. They would not push. If I poked them I could get them back down kinda, but there was still a lot of waviness that wouldn't go away. It's like the vinyl was stretched and had developed a memory. Anyway, within a couple minutes they would pop right back up. Remember, the vinyl I was using was super thick (1/8") and kinda stiff.
When I peeled the vinyl up, most was stuck real good, the adhesive coverage was good and some parts the adhesive was stuck to the epoxied deck so good it ripped the felt off the vinyl. Other parts, the adhesive would reluctantly pull from the wood but it wasn't easy. Most of the adhesive was still gooey.
The areas under the bubbles, the adhesive was almost dry. There just wasn't enough stick in those spots to hold it down again. I think because of the bubble (and obviously the air) the adhesive dried a lot quicker there.
I have no idea why I got these random bubbles, some were on the edge, some were in the middle. Somehow air of gas or something was coming from somewhere and causing the bubbles. The big one in the pic posted earlier was twice that size when I got home tonight. It's crazy. I really have no good explanation of why this happened.
