Re: sand blasting aluminum hull?
tried it on a copper sheet about same thickness and it warped real bad.
so yes looks like a bad idea.
1970 22' starcraft islander that i'm finishing up.
could stand painting but not that bad.
have replaced all wood including floor, oak walls, door, side panels and engine cover.
plus a flipdown oak tray and cup holder on passenger side of cabin wall.
have 2 sets of bows and am getting new material sewn up.
seems like a lot of people have never seen that cabin design and seem to really like it, i do.
the oak looks great.
thanks.
I'm a big fan of the early Starcraft hulls, I own 5 at the present time.
I just passed on a rather rough Islander nearby, but mostly since I didn't want to deal with an I/O drive. The boat needed everything, only the hull itself was good.
Some of those early cabins were really nice, they kept it simple, light and very functional. Even the cabin in my 18' Starchief is well done. I've been knocking around the idea of reworking it just a bit to gain some more underseat storage though.
I had a buddy that borrowed my largest pressure blast outfit to clean and repaint his porch railings, what I didn't realize at the time was that he figured that since it was there and all set up, he'd use it to clean two fenders on his 1965 Chevy truck, the result was a completely ruined pair of fenders, grille and hood. He had no idea how bad 160 psi was for sheet metal, even steel. (That blaster would have cut right through it if it were aluminum).
I saw a Corvette once that someone thought that sandblasting would be a shortcut to remove several layers of paint, the result looked like a bad fur coat with lots of holes.
If the paint is good, or at least not peeling, then I'd at best just scuff the paint, prime any bare metal with self etching primer, and epoxy paint the hull. If not, maybe just touch up what's there?
The original paint they used was pretty durable, it's pretty hard to remove.
My Starchief was originally dark burgundy in color, so I assume that was why it was stripped and repainted. I get the impression that they didn't use the right primer since it now looks like alligator skin. The best part is that it comes off easily leaving clean, sanded aluminum underneath. I will be priming it and repainting it with white epoxy either this year or next. I'll probably park it for this year and start work on it, a new deck, some new paint and a new motor are in line for it. I have everything but the wood for the deck so far, all I need is the time and to get some other projects out of my way first.
On mine, simply using a plastic scraper and about 100psi of air from a blow gun strips of the old paint, it will take a few days of work but it will come off clean. The hard part will be redoing the exterior of the cabin in vinyl, and to fill in the various unused old antenna holes. That along with the lack of ways to hide the dash wiring which is visible inside the cabin. I may make a false ceiling panel with a sliding access door to conceal the wiring.
