Thread: How to paint, repair then repaint boats with a minimum of labour

Originally Posted by Daddles

Sheesh, Sixpence is being sprayed on the back LAWN.

Sheer bloody luxury I'd say... a LAWN!!!

I just have these nightmares about white and yellow overspray all over our BLACK concrete driveway!!

Tonight's the night!

P

Originally Posted by Wongo

Nice work BM. Why don’t we partner in smuggling people into Australia? A boat like that can take 30 people no problem.

Maaaate! Have I got a deal for you! We're going to paint them yellow too!

In the meantime, the highbuild is on, my keyboard has white fingerprints on it :eek: :eek: , and Michael is back with his boot fair up my bot wondering why they aren't finished!

Tomorrow, I'm away, he's back to sanding , then the second coat of highbuild tomorrow night if all goes well..

Cheers,

P

The painting looks great Peter. Just a thought on the mast hole. What about putting a rubber boot on the mast to limit water ingressing through the hole?

Originally Posted by Wood Butcher

What about putting a rubber boot on the mast to limit water ingressing through the hole?

We've talked about that at length! Mik is a lot less concerned than I in that regard, as it is unlikely that the boats will be sailed in rugged conditions too often, but here is our consensus to date:

The mast partner http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com...5&d=1141563099 screws over the hole in a position to suit the mast rake, and I'll probably do a "dry" silicone gasket under it, so the upstand will take care of pretty much all deck water trying to slosh in.

The mast and the hole in the partner are a fairly close fit (or were when we last tried them), with less than a mm tolerance, so in heavy conditions one could simply tape the gap with race-tape, or we've also discussed making a boot out of motorcycle inner tube, or simply finding an "O" ring that fits tightly on the mast, and sliding it down against the partner.

I think our consensus at the moment is that we'll do nothing until it's a problem, and if it is, we know how to fix it!

(it turned out to be not a problem at all as the foredeck never gets close to the water because of the sheer of the OZ PDRs and in a capsize the hole is well away from the water and the boats don't want to turn turtle because the masts are so light and buoyant.

Cheers,

P

Ahh yes, well spotted Rowan!

Sadly for the forums, for other reasons we've gone all Puddleduckie with the names, but in our hearts we all know.. nudge nudge .

As it turns out, Michael happened to let slip that he doesn't mind a bit of the old wet 'n dry, so never one to disappoint a guest, I hauled him off to Bunnies in the dead of night to get some supplies, and this morning, pointing to two boats in the corner, mumbled something like " and they'd better be finished before I get home from work or else..".

He must have heard me!
Pics:

1) After the first coat of highbuild, we've used a bit of good old car bog for the minor touch-ups, although this hull has had a bit of sanding, basically here's what it looks like, ready to take off most of the last coat of paint!

2) A wet rag to act as a water reservoir, a cork pad with some 180 grit wet and dry wrapped round it, and a boat.... what more could a boy ask for? Well a few drops of detergent in the water to "wet it out" a bit, and a heap of pencil scrawls over the surface. When the pencil marks have gone, you know you've sanded far enough!

3) As sanding progresses, the paint gets decidedly thinner looking in spots, actually it's levelling out, taking out the minor bumps and lumps in the surface.

4) Sigh! All done, and ready for another coat. If we were going for a piano finish here, we'd do it again, but this is well and truly far enough for these boats. We could have been sailng for a week if we'd just rolled on some housepaint! :eek:

5) Yep! Start all over again! This time a light coat, a light sanding then some colour next!

Yes it all looks time consuming and it is. There are lots of other ways of doing this, but since we have the spray equipment at our disposal, (and I have Michael at mine! ) This is a pretty easy way of getting a reasonably workmanlike finish.

The top coat will tell though!

Cheers for another night,

P

Well chaps, the good ships "WALKS like a duck" and "TALKS like a duck" took to the water today!

They aren't finished, still need to be painted in their Duckling Yellow livery, but we needed to see how they'd go, and I'm pleased to report :"Swimmingly!"

I may not have time to update this thread tomorrow, and there are a few gaps, which we've recorded, but I need to go through the photos, so in the meantime for a glimpse of them on-water, go to http://tinyurl.com/jccjm

Check back later for the remaining construction stuff though, and hopefully next weekend for the finished product!

Cheers,

P (happy chappy!)

Well I may have accidentally not done any work on the original PDRacers for a year now, which means of course that with a bit over a month till the Nationals at Goolway, there's a bit of work to do to finish them off.

This actually turned out to be a bit fortuitous on two counts, firstly we can fix the scrapes and nicks of a year of abuse, and secondly I can con Boatmik to come up here and do the work!

So here we are, one month to go, with two boats to paint, two new masts to build, two new sails to make, a trailer to rebuild, oh and no I've sold the tow car as well!

Anyway while I've been rebuilding the Goat Island Skiff trailer to suit a couple of PDR's (and to make it tough enough for 5000 k's via Cunnamulla, Bourke, Broken Hill - I didn't say our navigation was any good!), Mik's been in the garage:

1) Two primed boats, undercoated, patched and sanded.... Mik starting to think our invitation for his visit was really a trap!

2) Thankfully he finds painting quite relaxing, fortunately he's also very good at it. We decided against spraypainting because: I'd have to do it (and we all know how long that would take) and: brushing gives a great finish within everyone's means and abilities, with a bit of care.

3) The blue pox descends on the fleet. Michael marks all the bits that need particular attention after the first topcoat, and sands with 180 grit on the ROS.

4) Second coat goes on, and Mik continues his meditation

5) Beautiful!!!

Cheers,

P

Thanks Midge for not picking one of the ones where I was sticking my tongue out!

MIK
http://www.pdracer.info

Originally Posted by Boatmik

Thanks Midge for not picking one of the ones where I was sticking my tongue out!

MIK

I have no idea what you mean!

P

Originally Posted by bitingmidge

I have no idea what you mean!

P

DOH!

Soooo ... Mik's staying with Midge ... and they're abusing each other on the forum

What was the fight about boys?

Richard

It's harder than you think!

Every time I go to log on, the cable is plugged in to HIS computer (and vice versa). So replying to one another is a serious logistic nightmare!

The road to Goolwa is soon to be paved with little yellow boats!

P

A somewhat sobering look at the actual costs:

While Michael's been here and hard at work turning the white primer coats of the boats into a nice shiny yellow, and the new the new white polytarp arrived for the new sails yesterday, a special Duck Flat purchase that's much better than the old blue ones. Cost $35 per sail though,
nearly $20 more than the old blue ones (ouch! ).

We're about to build two new masts to the new plans (there goes another former pergola ). This will be useful as I never did get round to fixing
the one we broke, so we've had to resort to sailing one boat and towing the other for quite some time now.

The trailer is almost together again.

I pick up the new car tomorrow (didn't have anything that could tow a trailer any distance with any guarantee of arriving in one piece).

So far the costs of the "cheapest boat in the world to build" look something like this

Two PDRacers (each) say $300.00 (well we've replaced the masts and sails and painted them in a really nice marine paint after all).

Fix the boat trailer - $250 in parts, tyres, bits and pieces (originally cost $40.00 twelve years ago.)

Car to tow the thing with (new Suzuki Grand Vitara) $32,000.

6,000 kilometre round trip to the first Australian PDR Championships in Goolwa,10-12 March, through the inland, and back via the Great Ocean Road, Gippsland Lakes and the Victorian Alpine country......PRICELESS.

If nothing else, I'm hoping to pick up a PDRacer record for the furthest travelled to a regatta this year, and maybe one or two other things along the way!

Cheers,

P

The road trip begins....

In the meantime I have a bunch of pictures to upload, more on sailmaking, "how to" on el-cheapo signwriting using photo-copy stencils, and so on, but it will all have to wait till the grand adventure ends one way or another!

So on to the trailer:

When I built the Goat Island Skiff 12 years ago, I scrounged an old rusted box trailer for free, and bought two lengths of second hand pressed steel roofing purlin for $40.00. One weekend later I had a perfectly good boat trailer using all the running gear and even the rusty mudguards from the oldie.

Roll on a decade or so, and with the new need to tow two boats around 6,000k, it needed work!

Firstly I gave it new springs and bearings, then put a ply "floor" down to try to minimise damage from stones. I bought a tin tool box for $40.00 from Supercheap which is big enough to house all the boards, lifejackets, paddles, sails etc, and screwed it to the floor. This will hopefully also put enough weight onto the trailer to stop it being blown off the road everytime a road train passes in the other direction!

The trailer was designed for a 16 footer of course, so it has a longish drawbar, perfect for opening the back door on the Suzi without hitting anything!

Spars are bundled in polytarp and on the roofrack.

By the way, one boat fits perfectly upside down on a standard 6 x 4 trailer, so don't fret, if you don't own a fleet, you won't need any of this.

Pics:

1) The load. Rakish angle is produced by the need to get the transoms up high enough to fit the tool box under the hulls!

2) It pays to advertise! Back panel is easily removable to convert the trailer back to carry the GIS.

3) Old sheet of ply on the front will hopefully prevent sandblasting of the paint. The colour looks a bit like an Australian landscape, but it was really left over after I've been spraying some lattice a few years ago.

4) Each boat is tied using ratchet ties, normally I'd use rope and a truckie's hitch, but I needed a really simple solution, and passing the ties through holes in the beams located everything easily.

For a real nautical look, I added Baggywrinkles over the ratchet bits to prevent scratches!

5) Given the whole classy presentation of the rig, I thought a couple of fins would set it all off, so a few minutes work with a bit of old formply was all it took!

Now of course comes the test!

How far will we get??

Cheers,

P