Tuesday, August 16, 2016

Just gotta sweat.

Well, I’ve not had much to post in some time. The weather here on the East Coast has been brutal. A prolonged heat-wave for most of the time. It has been just too hot to work on the boat, either in the boat shed or at my shed.

Which provided me with enough of an excuse to go ride to Ohio and fly out to San Diego and ride my bike in Northern California. Where it was just as hot or hotter. But, “it’s a dry heat…”.

Since the last post I have, over a period of weeks, sprayed the Awlgrip High Build Epoxy primer on the hatches. After letting it cure I sanded with 220 and 320 grit sandpaper prior to bringing out the topcoat. After cleaning the surfaces I masked and taped the non-skid areas in preparation for spraying.

It took awhile but there was finally a morning where the temperatures were in the mid-80’s. I mixed up a small amount of Awlcraft 2000 Matterhorn White and set it aside. After doing the two-rag wipe down of the surfaces I started to spray the exposed gloss surfaces.

The results were okay. There was a minor amount of orange-peel, a couple of sags which I was able to polish out and some small areas where the paint did not flow out enough.

After researching it and showing it my to friend who painted the hull, it is almost certainly the result of too little air-pressure at the gun and not enough material flow.

A week later I re-taped and masked over the gloss coat and prepped the exposed non-skid areas. This time I used a roller to apply the first coat. After about 10 minutes I “salted” the area with a 50/50 mix of fine and coarse Griptex. After letting that sit for about 30 minutes I removed any excess Griptex with air pressure and rolled on a second coat of Awlcraft 2000. Another “Salting” with the Griptex mixture to get an even distribution of particles. After another 30 minute wait and excess Griptex removal I rolled on the third and final coat of Awlcraft.

The non-skid areas came out pretty nice. Just the right amount of grip but not too rough.

Prep work.

Find the low spots

Masked

Painting.

Gloss coat done

Finished products.

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Out in the rain

And trial fitting...

A bit different

Hatch cover test  

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Now I wait for a break in the weather to start in on the deck. Looks like September...