Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Hey all, Springtime is here and being the 4th of April, it snowed a little this morning and I've still got plenty of snow and muck in the yard. There's enough cleared in the back that I can start working on the boat again though! I've got a couple of minor vehicle issues to clear up now that the weather is nice enough to hit the bone yards and settle down and spend some time on them.

That being said, I've got the Astro running. I used the scan tool at our shop ( OTC Genisys ) to reset the distributor cam retard and give it a good once over. Of course, after that finally got sorted out, I blew a water pump gasket and burned an ignition wire on the manifold. Sigh. At any rate, the vans a runner, and I'm waiting to see what kind of mileage I can get out of it once the computer gets done sorting out fuel trims and the adaptive learn on it.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the van

 

[boaterinsd]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

They didn't

They also didn't make them 4x4 either

They never made a GT

My van is a bit of an oddity you see, the PO installed a 350 Vortec out of a Savanna van, and an electronic transfer case out of a Blazer. So instead of a puny 4.3 vortec, I get 5.7 and 4LO for pulling stuff out of the public launch.

by saying "po" you are talking post office , right? cool van, sounds like a runner

 

[boaterinsd]

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

what is the make and model of this boat? thanks

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

by saying "po" you are talking post office , right? cool van, sounds like a runner

Nope, I mean "Previous Owner"

what is the make and model of this boat? thanks

My boat is a 1975 Glastron V178.

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

Well, the skeeters are so thick this year, they are biting each other for lack of substance, which has kept me away from my boat, other than a 20 minute attack. A garage would certainly speed things up, but to avoid sounding like a broken record about it, I'm considering building a temporary shelter over the boat, the city be damned. I've got large enough tarps, and I can fashion a frame over it out of 2x4's for cheap..I'm sick of not being able to work on this thing. Besides, if I get a tarp over it, I can paint it! I want to get the bottom of the hull painted, flipped and secure the cap to the hull so I can hang the motor. However, I may be able to hold off on the motor for one more season depending on what a friend of mine has for plans...he's buying the hull and trailer from the neighbor and has no immediate needs for the trailer. We'll see how that goes.

I've altered my graphics plans ( sorry JSCERSCA! ) and am pretty well set on painting the boat battleship grey with a graphical surprise that I conjured up in my head. A bit of a hybrid paint scheme...I hope it looks as good as my brain pictures.

At any rate, after this winter, I went out and found a few more cracks in the gel coat on the bottom of the hull that I hadn't gotten to sanding yet. I'm not entirely sure if they were there prior to this winter, or if they've always been there and I just didn't notice until now. I will have to consult my archives and see if I have any picture that shows the areas I'm concerned with.

I've been so busy with work and car repairs, I haven't had much chance to even think of working on the boat. I may get some things together and plan a day off of work to bust some work out on it. I've got an extra day of Vacation just sitting there with no particular time attached to it.

What's got me right now is the pace in which I'm actually getting any sanding on the hull done. My porter cable sander just isn't cutting it like I'd like. I'm going to look into getting some better sandpaper for the 7" rotary with a softer cushion instead of the hard plate I'm working with right now...that's way too aggressive.

I'll take any suggestions on sanding gel coat. I'm still thinking of picking up the wet sander ( air operated ) at Harbor Freight. It's $60, but with a 25% off coupon, it might be worth picking up...especially when it comes to wet sanding paint.

 

[redfury]

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

Re: Ooo! Sparkley! Redfury's Grinding again!

For lack of updating, here's an update. I haven't given up, but I have decided that in order for this project to ever get finished, I need to get at it and get the thing painted. I'm going to go the route of buying a spray gun and shooting it with paint instead of trying to roll and tip it. I've also decided on a paint job. I'm going for the Navy Camouflage...the blue, black and gray camo. It'll help hide any defects in the body work, since I'm just not going to be able to properly repair all those blisters. I've concluded that I just don't have that in me. So, the camo pattern works well for me, plus I can source material for the interior that will match, I can do a BIMINI top that matches and I can go with the military theme I had thought about incorporating in a few other ways prior to coming up with the camo theme. I WILL have the boat back together in ONE piece with a motor hung on it by the end of spring barring any major delays due to rain fall. At least, this is the current plan.

 

[jbcurt00]

Re: Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

Love the avatar:

Have the shirt.:facepalm: So, yeah, BTDT :watermelon:

Congrats on attacking it again! Tri-hull, right? Best of luck kicking up a notch & being ready when the water breaks this spring.

 

[redfury]

No Title

Well, I changed my mind about the paint for about the 40th time, this time I'm sticking with it. I shot the first coat of paint on the bottom of the boat. I'm going to put a full gallon of paint on it, this only took a little more than 30oz of product. I'm using "blitz black" from John Deere for the entire boat, but painting the swoosh in gloss black and then am going to add an accent stripe to the swoosh in either Red or Gold. If I do gold, I plan to paint it metal flake, which will be a project in its own right, but what the heck, a guy can dream, can't he? This is all being done with a cheapo HVLP gun I bought from Menards for 13 bucks. So far, so good. I really need a respirator though, that beer I had after shooting the paint really hit me good! ( cheap buzz? lol...yeah, I know better )

 

[Woodonglass]

Boy, I thought you Flew the coop!!! GET A RESPIRATOR!!!! Are you using Hardener in that Tractor Paint???

 

[redfury]

No Title

Nope, no hardener. It's an Enamel, and the reading I did from the guys that have used it to get the satin black on their hotrods say it's tough as nails as is. I'm not sure what I'd use for Hardener. I am cutting it with Xylene and found that I need to cut it a little more than I had because I was getting spatter from the 1.4 tip I was spraying with, so I got a little bit of an orange peel to the first coat. Not really a terrible thing since it's not glossy, but I'd like to be able to get to the point where I'm spraying an nice flat coat of paint since part of it is going to be gloss black. That'll save me a lot of sanding and polishing if I get the ratio I need down.

 

[redfury]

No Title

what's going on with uploading pictures anyway, I haven't been able to put anything up, keep getting database errors. What happened to the site recently?

 

[redfury]

Nope, no hardener. It's an Enamel, and the reading I did from the guys that have used it to get the satin black on their hotrods say it's tough as nails as is. I'm not sure what I'd use for Hardener. I am cutting it with Xylene and found that I need to cut it a little more than I had because I was getting spatter from the 1.4 tip I was spraying with, so I got a little bit of an orange peel to the first coat. Not really a terrible thing since it's not glossy, but I'd like to be able to get to the point where I'm spraying an nice flat coat of paint since part of it is going to be gloss black. That'll save me a lot of sanding and polishing if I get the ratio I need down.

 

[redfury]

No Title

okay, apparently one picture at a time works, just not multiples?

 

[Woodonglass]

redfury, Don't forget to "PIN" yourself if you'd Care to!!! Click Here To Enter Your Location on the iBoats Member Map

 

[redfury]

started looking at hardener since it was brought up. I just may end up finding some enamel hardener and going for it since the bottom is going to need every bit of hardness I can give it. Looks like it's only good for a few hours once it's mixed up, like an epoxy or 2 part polyurethane, but I've worked with those before, so I think it'll be worth it.
I did get to find out why xylol is the only thing to use with enamels! I tried to do some cleaning with mineral spirits and it just coagulated the enamel! Didn't expect that. Thankfully the xylol broke it right back down again, but don't make the mistake of using the wrong solvent with your paints!

 

[redfury]

started looking at hardener since it was brought up. I just may end up finding some enamel hardener and going for it since the bottom is going to need every bit of hardness I can give it. Looks like it's only good for a few hours once it's mixed up, like an epoxy or 2 part polyurethane, but I've worked with those before, so I think it'll be worth it.
I did get to find out why xylol is the only thing to use with enamels! I tried to do some cleaning with mineral spirits and it just coagulated the enamel! Didn't expect that. Thankfully the xylol broke it right back down again, but don't make the mistake of using the wrong solvent with your paints!

 

[redfury]

No Title

Well, the last coat of paint is on the bottom of the hull. I'll let it sit until I come back in August from vacation and then I flip the hull and start working on attaching the upper portion so I can wheel it around and work on it again. I ended up buying some Valspar enamel hardener from the local John Deere dealer for $44/pint which is good for hardening a gallon of paint. I have half the can left. It made a huge difference in how hard it became in response to me dragging my fingernails across the paint after it had dried for a couple of days. Without the hardener, I could make marks with my fingernails in the paint. With the hardener, not a scratch. I'm happy with it for what it is, we'll see how well it holds up against loading and unloading when the time comes.

Pro Tip : Valspar hardener can be added to Rustoleum MARINE paint to make it a stronger paint, so anyone looking to use it, I highly recommend the hardener, even though it was expensive.

It took me 4 coats of paint to get the hang of spraying and thinning the paint, the last coat was even a little too thin as I ended up with a few sags in the paint, but it's the bottom of the boat, I don't care at this point...it's done. I feel pretty good about spraying with a gun now though, so I look forward to the rest of the paint job turning out much better when I get to it.

 

[Woodonglass]

Hey RedFury...You might wanna check this out...Paint Your Boat with Tractor Paint
and for future reference, We kinda have an unwritten rule here on the forum now...If you don't post pics of what you did...It never happened.

 

[redfury]

No Title

I tried, I keep getting database errors when trying to upload pictures.

 

[Woodonglass]

Try using photobucket and use the IMG code