Ooo! Sparkly! Redfury's Grinding again!

[redfury]

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

I didn't know you were dealing with blisters.

Those blisters are due to the builder using putty to fill all of the difficult to roll areas, some builders will use it in a radius or a recessed area to help prevent air bubbles from being left in the laminate. Its a good idea, but frequently poorly executed, if they use the wrong putty, or use even the right one incorrectly, the bond between the gel coat and putty will be weak, resulting blisters.

The problem is that although you?ve ground out each blister and plan to fix each one, the entire bond line between the gel coat and putty is poor and these blisters are just the first places to visibly fail. As time goes on the entire area will become one big blister, although the spots you repair will hold up, but only those spots.

It's glass underneath the Gel coat everywhere I've ground out a blister. Along the sides of the strakes I was getting a tiny droplet of water out of some of them ( orange in color ). The glass that I did open up enough to see seemed to be resin starved.

Wow, That bites.
ondarvr,
Does that mean what I think it means? Should he grind the whole side area off.
RedFury,
I would hate to see you abort the boat after all the work you have already put in her.
Good luck
Bob

Hell no! if it comes down to me grinding down the entire hull gel coat off, then that's what's going to happen...maybe. Or, I'll just take what I've got and make it as pretty as I can and worry about the paint job just a little less. It's not a show boat, and probably not my last boat.

BTW, I did a quick count of the areas I ground out yesterday...580. With today's grinding and the hard count from yesterday, I estimate that I'll have 2500 holes ground into the hull when it's all said and done.

Needless to say, I'm done for the day... the nerves in my hands are buzzing still after finishing grinding 20 minutes ago with the Dremel.

Unless suggested otherwise, I'm going to keep with the original plan and keep at it, then flood the voids with acetone or denatured alcohol with one of those squeeze bottle things ( gotta pick on up somewhere ), hit it with the hair dryer and see if I'm getting anything out of the holes.

Interestingly, some of the blister holes have turned glossy black in the centers.

 

[BobsGlasstream]

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

redfury,
Glad to hear, I hate to let any boat go to the scrap yard.
Hey, Make sure you leave plenty of time between the solvents and Hairdryer. I would hate to read about a boater blown up with a hair dryer.
Take care, I'm enjoying the reading.
Bob

 

[ondarvr]

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

From what I can tell in the pics it appears the blisters follow the chine, strakes and other contour lines. This means something is different about those areas, it could be resin starved, but its looks too uniform, there's something else going on. When water is wicked up a strand of glass it can turn white, this can make it looked resin starved.

Are there blisters on the entire hull, or just where I see them in the pics.

It's always much easier to identify an issue when you can look at it up close and put your hands on it.

 

[Woodonglass]

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

Hey Red,

That PC11 stuff will do the trick. It will Stick to ANYTHING PERMANENTLY. IT IS Epoxy soooo, if you want to Gelcoat the hull that could be a problem. If you're gunna paint, then you're golden. Make sure to wash the area with acetone befor applying the PC11.

I'm just sayin...

 

[redfury]

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

http://marinesurvey.com/yacht/BlisterRepairFail.htm

This is a great read on Blisters. Well, I'm not going to go this far with my hull, but I may attempt doing a proper repair in one section just to see if it would be worth the trouble on my boat. It'll sit long enough to see a frost/heat cycle to hopefully give me an indication of whether it can be at least minimized.

I'm not expecting a perfect hull. I am not Oops! thankfully. Truthfully, I'll be the only one that knows they are there ( other than you guys ) and I doubt anyone is going to notice. The only real issue at hand is preventing any gel coat cracking from occurring where it has already started and where it may begin to the best of my ability.

 

[redfury]

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

From what I can tell in the pics it appears the blisters follow the chine, strakes and other contour lines. This means something is different about those areas, it could be resin starved, but its looks too uniform, there's something else going on. When water is wicked up a strand of glass it can turn white, this can make it looked resin starved.

Are there blisters on the entire hull, or just where I see them in the pics.

It's always much easier to identify an issue when you can look at it up close and put your hands on it.

Well, there are other blisters, but they aren't nearly as bad as the areas that are outlined in black. There are a few random blisters in the gold part of the glastron swipe and a few on the "V" part of the hull, but they aren't nearly as clustered as the edges of the hull.

Boat is getting paint, not Gel, so any repairs I do are going to be with the PC11 epoxy...though I need to find it cheaper than Ace Hardware...cost me $21 just for the little 1/2 lb tin.

 

[ondarvr]

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

That article is sort of accurate, but jumps to conclusions and misinterprets some things.

The reason I come to this conclusion is that in other reports he's written, he says he doesn't know the products used to build a hull (or know how to use them) and he's never seen one built.

The part about unsaturated glass is sort of accurate, unsaturated glass can give birth to blisters, but like I said before, when water wicks up a strand of glass it turns it a white-ish color, which looks like dry glass, but is just a result of the water migrating along the fiber.

If you grind the surface of any laminate and then expose it to the weather you'll see the same effect. Well you don't even need to grind it, just leave a laminate exposed and it will happen, grinding the surface just speeds up the process.

When a chopper gun is used correctly its the least likely laminate to blister. The reason is chop doesn't have binder on it and it has a high resin content. Used correctly is the difficult part. In the corrosion industry (chemical tanks and such) their are types of fabric designed for use as a skin or barrier layer near the surface, typically a polyester (or similar) fiber that is designed to hold a great deal of resin, it works as a barrier to prevent the liquid (whatever it is) from migrating into the laminate.

I'll stop rambling here, sorry.

Back to my question about the area with blisters, is it only along the chine and strakes, or does the entire bottom have blisters?


Edit. While you were posting I was typing, so you answered my question.

 

[redfury]

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

Well, I guess since you are a little better read than I on this subject, I'll defer to your judgment on this issue...

I'd say that every spot that I ground out, I left no void. I paid close attention to how the feathering of the gel coat to the glass was. If it didn't look like a fused surface, I ground until I got to a fused surface ( by that I mean that they both looked like they were part of one continuous block of material, no obvious jagged seam where the two met ).

I'm fully aware that there is no way that I'm going to hit every single blister this hull has to offer. For one, PC11 isn't that cheap as to me wanting to make my boat look like a peg board with the holes filled with the stuff, and two, I'm just not going to put that kind of effort into the bottom of the boat...my efforts in that department are going to be what you see everyday.

My larger concern is simply taking care of the blisters so the hull doesn't look like I gave it hair plugs. Or if it's even worth all the trouble in the first place. Granted, I've done almost half the hull already, I might as well keep at it. I just don't want to end up putting a bunch of effort into something that is just simply going to end up backfiring on me worse than if I had left it.

There's no way I'm stripping this hull down to the glass. If I want a show boat, I'll find another down the road and put the effort into that one. All I'm hoping for out of this boat is to have a good solid boat that I can use for years to come and just enjoy it. I don't want to worry about it too much...and honestly, it will probably see the water a dozen times a year, maybe two on a good one. Otherwise it'll be sitting on the trailer, or I'll be tinkering with it when I take the time to do such things.

At any rate, like I said, I'll take any advice and send it through the thought process mill and see what it spits out in the end. The more I have to chew on, the better the end result.

The larger issue at hand as far as this particular problem is concerned is simply the fact that I cannot sit and massage 17 feet of hull for hours on hand due to carpal tunnel or whatever it is that I have a problem with ( undiagnosed ), so my time only goes in spurts as I can handle it...so that is going to be a determining factor into which course of action I take...though stubbornness may prevail in the end and I'll just end up taking more time than I had previously thought on the bottom of the hull.

I won't chose the easy route if I end up regretting it in the end. I don't want to feel like I cobbled this boat together when it's all said and done.

 

[HopeSheFloats]

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

My apologies Red, geez, I haven't been in here since I was working on my Imperial way back when...you've made some fantastic progress...Kudos!!!

 

[vegasphotoman]

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

Looks like ya got your work cut out for ya Mike....

your decking looks great.....glad to see you're making progress!

 

[i386]

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

Looking good. I'm not very far ahead of you on mine.

 

[ondarvr]

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

If it were mine I would stop now, fill what you've carved out, and live with whatever shows up in the future.

The reason for this is that like he said in the article linked, you will never get to all of the current blisters, let alone ones that are just starting to form and then ones that will form in the future. So in a couple of years its possible for it to look just like it does now no matter what you do.

Fix as much as you can handle now, then repaint it and never look too closely at it again. This way you can at least sort of lie to yourself (through denial) that there is a problem. LOL. The only good part of it is the less its in the water, the longer the blisters will take to return or form new ones, plus the blisters are only cosmetic.

 

[redfury]

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

If it were mine I would stop now, fill what you've carved out, and live with whatever shows up in the future.

The reason for this is that like he said in the article linked, you will never get to all of the current blisters, let alone ones that are just starting to form and then ones that will form in the future. So in a couple of years its possible for it to look just like it does now no matter what you do.

Fix as much as you can handle now, then repaint it and never look too closely at it again. This way you can at least sort of lie to yourself (through denial) that there is a problem. LOL. The only good part of it is the less its in the water, the longer the blisters will take to return or form new ones, plus the blisters are only cosmetic.

Kinda the way I was swerving...thanks for solidifying that position, it's nice to hear it from a 3rd party. I think I'll kick around working out the ones I have ground out and see how much PC11 I end up using and how well the sanding goes on the hull. I can only assume that based on what I found in the stringer glass that there are air bubbles in the laminate ( so much for a thru hull transducer! ) and I'd end up spending a fortune on sandpaper.

So, I'll fix the damage that has been done to the hull take out the rest of the cosmetic blisters and move forward. I'm leaning pretty hard towards using epoxy primer as a barrier coat as well as an epoxy based paint for the hull when I do get to the painting stage now that the blister issue has been properly illuminated. This of course will potentially change the paint scheme plans depending on the color range available in the particular paint I chose to use....time for some research!

 

[redfury]

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

Well, not much to contribute in the ways and means of forward progress, though I do have a good handle on the blisters being filled and sanded smooth. I still have work to go, but getting the half of the hull sanded was a nice place to be at when the weather started turning foul.

I've been jumping around in my head trying to figure out my paint/interior scheme for a while now. One thought that has gone through my head, and I'm really liking the idea, is to turn this into a military boat. Paint the hull a dull Navy gray, paint the glastron swoosh flat black, and then do the hull numbers like the numbers on a battleship.

The other idea is a little more grand, and would require the help of my nephew who works in a vinyl graphics place...and the thought was to make the boat look like a gigantic lure. Not entirely sure which way I want to go with it.

I like the idea of going gray, because then I can hide my lack of talent in the paint dept with a flatter paint, and the thought of painting on a shark mouth low in the keel was an idea I had a long time ago...that way the mouth presents itself when I come up off throttle and during the initial phase before I come up on plane.

Plus, I could put little black outline stickers of crappie, walleye and northerns as my "kills" on the side of the boat, I can put my name on the side of the boat and have a cool name for the boat like SS WaveWacker.

Or, I could paint it Aircraft style and then put a graphic on the sides like the guys did on the bombers. I'm gonna have to do some work with photoshop and see what looks good.

 

[oops!]

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

actually....i like all three ideas !

man.....that is one boat load of work you are doing

 

[redfury]

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

actually....i like all three ideas !

man.....that is one boat load of work you are doing

Wish I had a shop to work in though, it would make it so much easier with my time schedule to actually get something done to the boat on a daily basis, instead of this sporadic schedule I'm working with. Considering I was hoping to get the deck in the boat this year and be happy with that work and having gotten this far with it, the pace has certainly sped up.

And...I have acquired a motor for the boat! $500 for my neighbors 125hp 1986 Force. I've never actually seen it run, but the fact that the guy is an avid fisherman and has never had a problem with the motor...I'm confident in the motor to say the least. Needs a paint job and the trim pump resealed, but other than that, I'll be nice to see that hanging off my boat...I'm hoping for mid summer next year. Let's see if I can keep to that goal.

 

[redfury]

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

Started working on polishing the boats cheap aluminum pieces and picked up some supplies to hopefully start making that rub rail look like chrome!

Anyone have a suggestion on what to do to keep this polished metal looking good for years to come down the road?

 

[redfury]

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

Found this pic and forgot to post it. This is what the patch looked like after it set up and I removed the plastic film from it. Obviously I glassed over gel coat, which is a no-no, but it wasn't a concern because I over glassed the patch so that I could sand it down to the shape of the hull so I could get away with using less filler when it was finished. I'm pretty close to being done with that part. I need to buy a long board so that I can do these repairs properly. They have an air powered one at HF that I'm thinking of picking up. My compressor can handle it, and it would probably be easier on me and allow me to keep my frustration in check so that I don't give up early and just let it buck the way it is. I really don't want to half *** this boat any more or less than my skills and focus will allow.

 

[Last Mohican]

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

Anyone have a suggestion on what to do to keep this polished metal looking good for years to come down the road?[/QUOTE]

Chrome it.

Other than that I have heard good things about Zoop Seal or Shark Hyde.

 

[Yacht Dr.]

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

Found this pic and forgot to post it. This is what the patch looked like after it set up and I removed the plastic film from it. Obviously I glassed over gel coat, which is a no-no, but it wasn't a concern because I over glassed the patch so that I could sand it down to the shape of the hull so I could get away with using less filler when it was finished. I'm pretty close to being done with that part. I need to buy a long board so that I can do these repairs properly. They have an air powered one at HF that I'm thinking of picking up. My compressor can handle it, and it would probably be easier on me and allow me to keep my frustration in check so that I don't give up early and just let it buck the way it is. I really don't want to half *** this boat any more or less than my skills and focus will allow.

Sweet check on the glassing .

8" soft pad will take care of that fair in job in about 47.289 seconds ( im only estimating of cource ).

Im sure you know about pre-gelling to cure the "hairs" of the glass before you topcoat .. so Ill move on here..

Your alum is looking sweet. I can only think of clear coating..or having a can of "Never Dull" on your boat for those polish touchups .

Peace out YD.