Marine Paint recommendations

[TK1]

Hi,

Will be nearly time to paint my kayak soon (see my other thread in Boat Building). I'm planning to do a gloss dark green below the waterline and diagonal stripe on the side/upper hull (to cover my atrocious scarphing :wink:).

Interested in recommendations of marine enamels. I've only looked at Bote Cote, but their green seems a bit light - I'm aiming for a British Raing Green type colour.

If you know any places to get it in Melbourne I'd be interested to know also.

And (based on Bote Cote) - is $50/litre normal price for marine paint? Ouch!

Thanks,
Darren

[johnc]

Have you tried Whitworths, they stock a good range of marine paints. There is also a group called Jotun, but not sure if they do small quantities.

[PAR]

Adding a drop of black to your green, then mixing will darken it up. Just use a single drop at a time, as black will quickly change the color. I've been custom matching and mixing colors like this for many years and it works very well. Of course you should use the same style if not the same brand of paint. I've found most all oil based paints will intermix with each other, ditto with acrylics (latex), epoxies and single part polyurethanes.

I actually have 5, five gallon buckets of paint I use to mix up for cove and boot strips, etc. White, black, a rich, fire engine like red, a medium blue and a bright yellow. With these colors I can make any other color you may desire. I'll mix by percentage, using single drops until I get the combination I want. An example would be a green cove stripe for a Lyman I restored recently. 8 drops of yellow, 8 of blue, 3 of red (to warm it up a little) and a drop of black. This was a dark hunter like green, which matched other paint on the boat. To put on three coats I needed a little less then a quart, so 12 ounces of both yellow and blue, 4.5 ounces of red and 1.5 ounces of black made just about a quart, with a small amount left for touch up later.

[Boatmik]

International paints (apart from the tiny margins they allow in their RRP - making the paints a SERVICE rather than a profitable line for retailers - I don't sell them BTW) are really wonderful in the way they flatten out after application.

I'll try and find the post where I explain the method in the next couple of days - using a Gem thick foam miniroller and not too much paint (otherwise you end up with bubbles). This combination can get very close to a sprayed finish using the paint straight out of the tin.

If you want a big range of colours - you won't find it, though there is some option to do as PAR suggests.

Hint with the scarf and all other defects - clear finish it - it is the least amount of work. You will shudder every time you look, but everyone else will never once notice it.

Experts will see it and remember the 20 or so scarfs that they have bu**ered up in the last 20 years or so.

The biggest test for boatbuilding is finishing it and using it. Anything else is a bonus.

Michael Storer

[Boatmik]

With some bitterness I reflect on this thread

http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com.au/showthread.php?t=35435

MIK

[scooter]

Michael, I read in that thread you spoke well of the International Brightside Enamel.

I have read a few threads on some car forums lately about very low budget ways to redo the duco on cars, and there was a roll on Brightside marine enamel mentioned that I assume is the same stuff?

Couple of links here (http://rollyourcar.com/default.aspx)& here (http://rolledon.com/).

[Tor]

TK,

It appears that $50 a litre is the going price :oo:

I shall have to make sure my next build doesn't need painting :rolleyes:

Due to the lack of UV stabilisation you need a polyurethane paint not an epoxy based paint (or did you mean a paint for Epoxy..?)

On the point of the Brightside paints being so glossy it shows up all the imperfections would the high build filler that body shops use be suitable? Or is there a reasonably priced marine equivalent?

Tor

[Dry Water]

I used Brightside to paint my Scruffie a few years ago. Put it on with a brush....black topsides, grey bottom. It came up like a spray job. I wouldn't use anything else and if your prep work is up to par you won't get those defects evryone talks about.

[Dry Water]

Yeh, like Mik says in his thread. Don't hang about and just get on with it. I'm a convert.

[Daddles]

Sixpence (see avatar) is painted with 2 pack poly. Beautiful stuff. Sprays a dream. As hard as the hobs of hell the next day - almost impossible to sand off so it should last well in the water. The downside of course, apart from the appalling cost, is its toxicity (get your mother in law to help :devilred:), but having stuffed about repairing enamel paint everytime something hard goes near it, I love the stuff.

Richard

[Boatmik]

I love poly for the same reasons and hate it for the same reasons Daddles.

International Perfection has be retweaked to work very nicely with manual painting methods too. I wouldn't spray polyurethane if you paid me a million $$$$$

You need REALLY GOOD breathing equipment. Carbon filters are not enough - you need air coming from somewhere the paint is not via a tube to somewhere near your proboscus.

One friend of mine had a stroke at 38 after doing a two pot spray job using a good quality mask with carbon filters. Industry standard is an external air supply for spraying 2-pot if you are in an industry that actually takes care of its workers.

MIK

[Slavo]

International Perfection has be retweaked to work very nicely with manual painting methods too.
Mik,
what do you have to do to it for painting with brush or roller - thinners?
Slavo

[Daddles]

Industry standard is an external air supply for spraying 2-pot if you are in an industry that actually takes care of its workers.

MIK

Has that changed in the last eighteen months to two years? I got mine from a local paint supplier and used the mask he recommended (yes, I know about shops and their recomendations). I also painted it outside, on the lawn :oo:

Sadly, I have to give the hull another couple of coats thanks to the butcher I employed to build the boat ... hang on, that's me :cool:
Anyways, I need to redo bits of the hull.

Can I assume that you would recommend that I use the poly for the redo but paint everything else with something less horrendous? Or would you use the poly as a damned good base and put enamel over the top?

Richard

[durwood]

Daddles, going over the poly with any other finish would be a backward step. None of them are as servicable as the poly.

Seems a lot of people are easily put off with stories of the dangers of 2 pack paints. They are no where near as bad as people seem to think they are.

If you are stupid and don't follow a few simple rules you may get into trouble. I have worked in the paint industry for over 45 years. Paintyers get a medical test every 12 months and we use these paints every day all day. If you do a bit of sensible preperation like putting the boat (or whatever) somewhere with good venilation (on the lawn etc). use a sensible paint mask designed for paint fumes. The normal one used is the Sunstrom mask with carbon /paper and prefilter for paint. ( no need for the top line air supply ones unless you intend painting as a business)

As spraying is so fast you are going to only be actually painting for a few minutes not hours.

If these paints were as dangerous to use as touted then people would be dropping like flies. If you can paint a floor inside a house where there may be little ventilation and without the added advantage of using the compressed air to create a breaze with unskilled users ( general public) then someone with a few brains and some thinking in the way they will attack the job should never have a problem with poly. The extra toughness of these paints makes the effort required worth it.

You can of cause brush it if you want its fabulous to brush, so why not do that and have the advantages it offers.

I would never consider using any other paint for such an application and never would I for one minute baulk at picking up a spray gun to apply it.

[Boatmik]

Howdy Durwood,

I'd be agreeing completely about using something else over the poly is a backward step.

Problem is that while a professional like you might know about the risks and have them in the back of your mind (yearly medical checks and all) someone who gets given a mask at the local shop stands a reasonable chance of being given a bum steer and not knowing about it.

More than likely you also are aware of the symptoms of breathing too many isocyanates (sorry got this wrong before) too so would pull out of the job if there were problems.

That is why the online brochure at the International Paint site says
Perfection must never be sprayed by amateur users. Only
professional applicators with specialist personal protective
equipment and full training may spray this product.
http://www.yachtpaint.com/australia//general/perfection/pdf/leaflet.pdf

How much information did you get Daddles? I am not trying to be a panic merchant here - REALLY!!! Has anyone talked about the risks? I would guess not.

The thing is that people in shops and professionals often don't know the products themselves because they never dig into it a bit deeper and/or just may not be aware of how manufacturers are changing their instructions.

The thing is for every 500 amateur done spray jobs with 2 pot they will go OK, but for the one - like my friend mentioned above ... bang.

If doing the interior of the boat clear I would be pretty content with a good marine Varnish - much less chance of knocks and scrapes inside the boat so you don't need the same degree of hardness. Midge's boat is done with this particular mix.

The beaut thing is that both single and two pot paints have made big jumps in the recent year or three and are much improved with spray like finishes possible for single pots from rolling with the right rollers (no thinning or tipping off required) and for two pots (use the correct "brushing thinner" NOT "spraying thinner) rollers and light tipping off with a brush to get very close to sprayed finishes as well.

Both go on with a stipple and light brushstrokes respectively but they flatten right out over the next 24 hours.

They really are quite remarkable compared to what they were a few years ago.

Michael

[Daddles]

So what I'm taking out of this is:

- for the recoat of Sixpence's hull, use the poly but roll or brush it.

- for the other painted bits, which will amount to fore deck (maybe) and interior, use marine enamels where I'm not using varnish.

With the bloke who served me in the shop. It's been a long while now but I'm pretty sure he did the right thing with his advice. I've a long track record for being a bit slap dash with safety and there was none of that with this paint job. That suggests to me that the bloke got his message through and to be fair to him, I went in there telling him I was going to spray. Frankly, I would have been skeptical of being told that brushing was as good, particularly as I've got some good spray gear.

Now, for future boats and assuming that things don't change too much, how safe is 2 pack to put on with a brush? I will, of course, revisit this at the time, but there'll be others reading this and wondering. It's hard to go back to something soft like enamel after you've experienced the joy of poly and genuine safety concerns would be one of the few reasons I can think of (hell, I even laid down four, thin rolled layers of poxy before I painted her - wasn't happy with the third - that's for Mik who possibly remembers having to convert me :wink:).

Richard

[durwood]

Daddles,
Same rules apply with brush as for spraying, except you don't have the quanity of fumes in the air and you don't have overspray which is a problem if you are somewhere it can get over thingson you and around you.


So get outside preferably in the morning when its calm and fine weather.

Boatmik
The International paints warning is a bit over the top. Probably trying to cover their butt in this age of litigation.

[Boatmik]

Good point!

And if the results are not too much different ...

http://homepage.mac.com/peterhyndman/Sites/PDRinfo/PDRbuilding/buildingpics/Painting/Resources/painting014.jpeg

http://homepage.mac.com/peterhyndman/Sites/PDRinfo/PDRbuilding/Resources/smallpdrfoils018.jpeg
Actually this second picture is a cheat - it is a rolled epoxy finish about to be sanded down and varnished.

MIK

[TK1]

Thanks for the comments/replies.

Looks like I'll be rolling on the International Brightside - a place in South Melbourne I found, McDonald Marine, has it and provide good service/recommendations. Also get all my Bote Cote there. I recommend it to anyone in Melbourne after supplies.

Now I just need to choose a colour...green with a white stripe looks like the winner, although their blue is nice. And the wife suggested dayglow orange so I can be found at sea...

Regards,
Darren