1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

I then inspected the whole and found only three minor parts with damage. Unfortunately these were caused by me. One was a drill a hole up above the waterline where I was trying to weaken some filler material when I was getting it. The other two were from me popping a screwdriver through that same runner trying to get the material out as well. They were all sealed in nida-bond when I poured it but I ground then down to fill with fiberglass matting and resin. Sometimes I'm a little too eager and not that bright. Lol

This one was just crappy repair I did years ago from some damage it originally had. It just needs to be sanded down the most part.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

I forgot to take pictures of the areas that I ground down before I put fiberglass matting on them so here are the after pics.

I filled the little patchy areas deep enough but they look ugly right now.

I wish I had taken a picture of the bottom of the hull on the transom after I ground it back. You can see a clear bright red line from one side of the bottom of the hull towards the other in a semi circle. It was just under the fiberglass I ground down and i saw it after I washed it in acetone. you could see it clear as day. If you look in this picture really closely you can still see it through the fiberglass I laid down. I wonder if it was some kind of marking in the factory when they made the boat. I thought that was pretty cool. What do you guys think it is?

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Well that's all for me for today. the clouds are rolling in and I want to relax with my buddy and have a beer tonight.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Moving a lot slower now. I'm using the DA with 80 grit trying to sand down the gel coat on the hull to get out a couple of crazing sites up along the bow and all of the many various gouges the hull has incurred in the last 48 years. 80 grit on the DA takes it off so slowly that I only want to use it to fade back nicks and gouges. I did finally start filling in the low spots on the transom and areas around the edges where I reinforced it with 2 layers of fiberglass matting. To do this I used home made peanut butter made out of bondo glass, a little resin, and regular bondo. Its about 50% regular bondo, 40% bondo glass, and 10% resin mixed with Mekp and hardener. I spread it on quickly and heavily and will then use my air powered long file to smooth it out. I mastered flattening out bondo with my longfile when I was leveling out the heavily dented in old factory hard top doors in my CJ7 that I restored, so this is a cake walk for me. lol

 

[Woodonglass]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Uhhmmm...IMHO not a good fairing material. Bondo products use talc for filler material and it will absorb water if and when the paint or gelcoat chips. This will lead to major problems with the repair later on. Lot's of examples of this here on the forum. You should be using Unwaxed resin, 25% by volume of cabosil and the rest glass bubbles to make your HomeMade fairing material. This will ensure it does not absorb water if the paint or gelcoat chips in the future.

Just making sure you are aware.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Uhhmmm...IMHO not a good fairing material. Bondo products use talc for filler material and it will absorb water if and when the paint or gelcoat chips. This will lead to major problems with the repair later on. Lot's of examples of this here on the forum. You should be using Unwaxed resin, 25% by volume of cabosil and the rest glass bubbles to make your HomeMade fairing material. This will ensure it does not absorb water if the paint or gelcoat chips in the future.

Just making sure you are aware.

I knew regular bondo would absorb water, but I thought if you mixed it with resin and bondo fiberglass it made it much less likely to absorb water in the event of a chip. I thought this mixture would turn it into fiber bondo, which is the blue stuff I found all over the boat below the gel coat and joining the wood pieces for the side stringers.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Oh, and Woodonglass. I'm loosely following your paint scheme for the boat. I have leftover hardener from my jeep project that I will use mixed with my Rustoleum topside paint to do the hull. I'm going to use about a quart or so of leftover high build primer I have leftover too for the first layer of priming the outer hull. I'm hoping it will fill in the shallow scratches and whatnot that I didn't grind down all the way in the gel coat. I am sanding down the gel coat as smooth as possible, but there are some long scratches along the bottom of the hull that I didn't want to try to fill or sand down to fiberglass so I'll see how that goes. I'll use the Rustoleum marine grade primer on the last 2 layers before I paint though. High build primer worked great on filling up any shallow areas of my jeep and I'm hoping for the same effect from it on the boat.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

I guess I can just grind most of this bondo layer down and use strictly bondo glass and resin from now on to fill in the rest of the transom. With that little of bondo used with so much resin and bondo glass I'd think that first layer should be ok. It's not structural at all, just filling in the low spots where I ground off the gel coat and doubled up the matting around the hull and transom from where I cut it out.

 

[Woodonglass]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Again, not saying you can't but I personally would not use any bondo product below the water line. I'd make my own fairing material from resin, cabosil, and glass bubbles. The High Build primer is great stuff and hides a lot of small imperfections.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

I got the last of the transim area leveled out with bondo glass mixed with a little resin. It loogs great but it was too dark to post pics of it finish sanded.

 

[sphelps]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Hi Hoff , I just read thru your thread and it,s great to see another old classic saved from the landfill ! My 64 MFG is built pretty similar. I used seacast in the transom and made spacers from pb but I cut the inside skin instead of the outside skin out for the prep. Gunna tag along and watch her come together if ya don,t mind ..
BTW the bondo resin jelly is water proof and easier to work with than the bondo glass IMHO.
See ya SP..

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Sphelps. Thanks for the shout out! Yep, i cut the outside transom off because it was teice as thin as the inside and completely warped from the rotten transom. It sat in a field for 20 years to rot and was in bad shape. I wondered about using jelly but hadnt worked with it before. I knew bondo glass was rock hard from past experience and so i just added some resin to thin it down. I might try jelly if i do another project. This boat is my first and i'm sure I'll learn from it. It's a lot of sweat, blood, and a few bucks to finish so far.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Well I finally got the gelcoat sanded down and ready for primer today. There was a yellow coating over two thirds of the boat that I can only describe as a cross between epoxy snd donkey urine. It was almost impossible to send off until I used 40 grit sandpaper on my DA. I thought it was oxidized gelcoat but when I got to the bow I ground out a thick layer of it and found redcoat slathered all over it. After sitting down the redcoat I found it was supposed to fill a whole bunch of deep scratches all over the bow. So now I think that yellow coding was some type of crappy paint meant to match up with the gelcoat color. I sanded down all of the scratches down to gelcoat so now it looks great and all that crap is gone. Here are pictures of the first layer of primer. I used leftover high build from my jeep project and the rest is rustoleum marine primer. I'll coat the entire boat with rustoleum primer after I sand this down.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Here are some pics while I was sanding down the gel coat and that yellowish paint crap that was on top of it over most of the boat. The gel coat was bright white underneath and it was a shame that it was in too bad a shape to repair, but sanding it down removed 99% of the scratches and now it looks a 100 times better.

Here is a pic of that yellowish paint on top of the red coat slathered on the bow. I ground it all down so now there isn't a scratch to be seen. What the hell was that yellow paint stuff? It was seriously bonded to the gel coat so it had to be pretty strong stuff. I still don't understand why anyone would fill all those scratches with red coat and then paint it with that horrible yellow stuff. I'd have rather just left the gel coat in place and lived with the scratches then go through all that effort to make it look like crap.

 

[sphelps]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Primer looks good hoff ! Much better than the yellow stuff.. What paint are you using on the hull ?

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Primer looks good hoff ! Much better than the yellow stuff.. What paint are you using on the hull ?

I'm using Rustoleum Top Coat paint. It will work the best for me since it will only be in the water for maybe 4 days straight once or twice a year on vacations. The Rustoleum primer sure does lay down shiny, but then I always lay down primer a little wet.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Well, I made my first real mistake. I had my cans of primer and paint in the same bag and yesterday and looked at the primer and must have grabbed the paint by mistake. I was very tired from a long weekend of working on the boat sanding for 11 hours straight, picking vegetables in the garden, having relatives in town, my grandmas birthday and was trying to lay down the first coat of primer before nightfall. So I covered roughly half the boat in topside paint instead of primer. Since I had sanded down the gel coat with 40 grit on my DA, I'm not worried about the paint not sticking so yesterday I sanded it down fairly well with 400 grit all over the boat and then reshot it with the primer. It looks pretty good now. When I was primering and painting my jeep I was used to primer always being a different color and always in different cans. No harm no foul I guess since they say the paint sticks to 80 grit sanded gel coat and I cleaned it all off with acetone as well. So tonight I will run over the surface of the primer with a scuff pad and shoot on two more layers of primer. Tomorrow afternoon I will sand it down with 600 grit and then spray it with two layers of rustoleum mixed with hardener and acetone. Moral of t he story is that you shouldn't try to do too much when you are tired. Story of my life. lol

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Well, I made my first real mistake. I had my cans of primer and paint in the same bag and yesterday and looked at the primer and must have grabbed the paint by mistake. I was very tired from a long weekend of working on the boat sanding for 11 hours straight, picking vegetables in the garden, having relatives in town, my grandmas birthday and was trying to lay down the first coat of primer before nightfall. So I covered roughly half the boat in topside paint instead of primer. Since I had sanded down the gel coat with 40 grit on my DA, I'm not worried about the paint not sticking so yesterday I sanded it down fairly well with 400 grit all over the boat and then reshot it with the primer. It looks pretty good now. When I was primering and painting my jeep I was used to primer always being a different color and always in different cans. No harm no foul I guess since they say the paint sticks to 80 grit sanded gel coat and I cleaned it all off with acetone as well. So tonight I will run over the surface of the primer with a scuff pad and shoot on two more layers of primer. Tomorrow afternoon I will sand it down with 600 grit and then spray it with two layers of rustoleum mixed with hardener and acetone. Moral of t he story is that you shouldn't try to do too much when you are tired. Story of my life. lol

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

Oh, and am I correct in assuming that all I need to do when painting the interior of the boat is rough up the fiberglass a bit, wipe it off with acetone, and then primer it? The inner hull sides are waffled from the fiberglass they used so I couldn't sand it down much more than the surface so I was going to use my scuff pad to prep those areas and just sand down the high spots on the floor with the DA. I plan on spraying the sides of the inner hull with paint but using a roller on the floor to make it easier and help set in the non-slip additive for it.

 

[hoffmanuno]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

I finally got the boat painted today. There's a fair amount of orange peel. I think I used enough hardener to get the Rustoleum paint to set up by tomorrow. I used about a quarter cup Hardener per quart more or less. It's got two to two and a half coats on it and that should be enough. There were a couple of areas where it didn't look all that great but the rest of the boat looks really nice. I get a little anal-retentive about how I paint things. Lol

 

[Woodonglass]

Re: 1964 Starcraft Bahama Restore

If you thinned with Acetone and used the hardener the paint should be dry to the touch in an hour. It will take a week or two for Full Cure.