Re: 1986 Proline 23 CC.
Hudson:
1) Ask a PM to consolidate both of your 1986 Proline threads into 1 thread titled something like: 'Info & paint help needed for a 1986 Proline' ~ Or something similar. I choose my title somewhat unwisely to get help: 1960 Glastron has a new home! Unless you read my thread you don't know what I'm doing or need help with. You see the thread title & maybe you don't like 'glassers, 1960 boats or Glastrons in general and so never open it up to see what a glorious mess it is, or my ham-fisted attempts to revive it's glory. You see where that ^^ is all going...... Then ask questions & give them some pix of the problems.
2) Try and ask the questions you have or problems that come up in the correct place. Here in your thread under Restorations ask boat, 'glass, tinny (Starcraft, typically, aluminum boats), paint or basic motor, & basic electrical questions. If you have a Johnson motor that won't start reliably & you take a look & it looks like a big greasy mess that makes no sense, post the year, model & serial # of the motor over in the Johnson motor thread and ask for help w/ what ever the problem seems to be. Same w/ the electrical thread. The guys looking out for us rookies in motors & electrical will ask questions & ask for pictures, video sometimes too.
3) Try to give someone a day or 2 to answer your question, and just log into your own thread and post : '^^ bump ^^' it will bring your thread back to the top of the recent post screen on the restoration main page. And because it just says bump, people will know why you did it, to attract attention to your unanswered question.
There are 25K+ of us, w/ 300K + threads, and I don't even know how many moderators, but not that many. They'll swing through every now and again & answer some questions.
Don't be surprised if there isn't quite a bit of check WOG's thread on pg xyz for painting methods & tips, just like Jon just suggested above. oops thread on his hull extension project is MASSIVE, but a good read to learn 'glass repair & finishing and dang near everything else. He was also nice enough to leave an index on page 1, to make it easier to search. Even better do an advanced search from the forum homepage. Be as specific as you want with the search terms, if you don't find a solution to the problem at hand, be a little less specific. Hunt away, because none of us are really re-inventing the wheel, except maybe oops and a small handful of others that are taking their builds to a whole new level I'll never reach. Most questions & problems are in here somewhere, we just need to find them. Spend a nice couple of days hunting & pecking away and take notice of the guys w/ lots of posts and long histories here. Jon's post above is his 381st, and he's been in here hunting around since June 2011. Look in the signature line under their posts, Jon's above has a link to his 1960 Corry resto. Read through some of those, esp if you see oops post somewhere. Ezmobee, Bond-O, Yacht Dr & others are all really helpful guys, but you got to give them some time to get here.
If your title said anything about paint, I assure you WoodOnGlass would have done a cruise through & left you some helpful tips/info and you could click the link in his signature to check out his most excellent paint & upholstery work. If you want to be impressed w/ rookie efforts look for Jasoutside's Jet thread and JDA1975's Skeeter thread<<-- This has some most excellent upholstery work & is well documented. Jas does a great job w/ photos & videos and lets us tag along as he churns through making decisions & doing the actual work too. He's kind of a machine... read through the Jet & then move on to his Islander thread, you'll see what I mean.
If you left click your mouse button on a user name, it brings up some choices, one of them is PM. Some of the moderators & some of the guys who've been here awhile don't want PM's. They'd like all the questions to be posted online available to all. So if you've got a fairly specific problem that might benefit others, like your orange peel problem you started this thread with, maybe do a quick 2nd thread & name it: 'Help the Rustoleum I used has orange peel pretty bad'.
I am not a painter, but if I had to guess:
the paint went on too thick from the can (WOG has a recipe in his thread for using an additive hardener & thinning the paint)
the paint was rolled on too thick/heavy
there was air flow or warm temps that dried & skimmed over the surface of the paint before the underlying paint cured
or a combination of those. None of which are as bad as you think. I would love it if the FireFlite had orange peel paint half as good as yours.....
As long as the surface was well prepped, you might post that info, and well cleaned prior to painting & allowed to flash/dry, and the Rustoleum has dried & has adhered well to the hull/cap, wet sand w/ 1 or 2 grits lower then you normally would between coats of paint. I'd guess 220 may get rid of the orange peel. But sand it wet. You can generally go 1 grit more aggressive when sanding wet.
Just sand til the peel is gone, dry, clean, get WOG's paint recipe, use the hardner, and a 1/4 foam roller, and follow the steps of roll & roll or roll & tip. Those 2 roll terms should get quite a few hits here as an advanced search or on youTube. Watch some of those too.
As a side note, if you decide to dive in & do a little or a 100% rehab job, definitely check out friscoboater's threads here & his youTube channel. Very helpful info, but not really geared toward painting only boat work.
Cheers & welcome to the winter drydock here at iBoats!
PM me anytime, or swing by the ole FireFlite work site!
