Re: what I need to paint my boat HELP with my project!!!
Prep, prep, and more prep. It's the most important part of the process. Also be aware that a painted hull can hide repairs and problems, and many boat buyers are aware of this. If your hull isn't already painted, you might be decreasing your resale value by covering perfectly good glass.
Here's an interesting thing to do for estimating your prep time:
Go to the lumberyard and buy a small piece of rough sawn quality wood... something hard like ash or oak. Get it rough, not sanded.
Using your sanding tools as described above, and grades of sandpaper from about 120 through 220, and then 400 to 600, spend time sanding the wood until the surface is as perfect as you can make it... smooth and flat.
Then using a sample of the primer you'd use for the boat, paint it. Examine it afterward for high spots, bumps, cracks, etc and sand with fine grit as needed.
Then apply the actual paint, using the roll and tip method or similar to get a smooth, evenly flowed surface.
Finally examine it... with a good quality paint, you should now have a surface that is smooth, shiny, and will reflect light with a sparkle.
If it doesn't look smooth, like there are bumps, the grain shows through, the surface is uneven, or has scratch marks, you didn't sand enough.
If it looks good, multiply the time it took to get that smooth surface by the size of your boat.
You should find that the time you'll spend sanding and cleaning your hull in prep for painting will be about 95 percent of the time you spend on this project. If you spend half the time prepping and half painting, you'll almost certainly end up with a lousy result that looks worse than what you have
now.
Either way, you'll get a fair appreciation for why boat manufacturers typically like to pull a smooth hull from the mold rather than trying to fair it afterward
Erik
PS: You can also look in Oops! thread on hull extension to find out how much time he spend sanding his new gelcoat fair.
