BOTTOM COMPLETE!

The bottom is complete! The last three coats of barrier coat were applied about 1-week ago. Last Friday and Saturday, the barrier coat was sanded out as it had a bit of an orange peel texture. Since the orange peel was somewhat pronounced, we used an 80 grit on random orbit sanders to knock the orange peel down then finished off with more fine sand paper, eventually finishing off with a 220 grit.

The two photos below are after sanding the barrier coat and the final product.



The final finish is VC17. I had contemplated other bottom paints but settled in on VC17 due to my familiarity with the product and the ease of application. The VC was rolled on in two coats over the course of a couple of hours.

The final finish is relatively good. There are a few areas to address that didn't sand out as nicely as I had hoped they would, but I am happy with the final product. We'll leave the fine tuning for next winter.

Hullabaloo is scheduled to launch May 22nd. Over the course of the next week, we will hopefully be buffing and waxing the hull, installing the windows, and (more important than the other items) installing the prop shaft.

A new prop shaft is being cut as the old one had been somewhat worn where the shaft passed through the stuffing box and cutlass bearing on the strut. The new shaft should be here tomorrow.

FAIRING COMPLETE - ON TO THE BARRIER COAT!

Well, fairing the hull is complete. Glyn and Joe helped out for a week night and we got most of the fairing complete, with the exception of a few pad locations.


The pad locations were faired out over the course of the next few days. Along with fairing these few locations out, we long boarded the bottom of the hull. The process of long boarding involves sanding the entire bottom of the hull with long boards (approximately 4" wide x 30" long boards with sandpaper attached to them). This allows for the hull to be sanded out without gouging the hull, as would likely occur with a small sanding pad. For this operation, we used 36 grit sandpaper.

The process of long boarding took the better part of the weekend. With this complete, I spent the next few week nights touching up areas of fairing that I felt needed work.

This past weekend we began spraying barrier coat. Prior to the barrier coat being applied, the hull was sanded lighting with 80 grit sand paper and then wiped down with Interlux 202 solvent. The water line was also re-taped to make sure the edge between the barrier coat and boot stripe was sharp. Then it was on to barrier coat.

I had decided to spray the barrier coat on in lieu of rolling. The barrier coat I had decided to use was Interlux 2000E. The spray gun used was an HVLP gun with a siphon cup. The gun had a 1.8 mm spray tip and ran at a pressure of approximately 50psi.

The first coat went on very slowly. The spray was very thin. I had assumed this was due to the thickness of the barrier coat product. After we had completed the spraying, I took apart the gun to clean it and discovered a very small paint filter that seriously restricted the flow of the 2000E. The filter was removed for subsequent coats of 2000E and allowed for a much faster application. There was a bit more splatter with the filter removed, but I do not anticipate this being an issue given how well 2000E sands out.

At this point, there are three coats of barrier coat sprayed. The bottom is looking good. There are some areas that will need attention. There are a number of pin head sized voids that need to be filled where blisters had previously existed and where the fairing process did not fill the voids. I will be experimenting this week with filling those voids, either with a brush applied 2000E or filling and sanding of the voids with Interfill fairing compound. In either case, I am hoping the bottom will be ready for bottom paint by the end of next weekend.

Here are a few photos of the bottom, after the 3rd coat of barrier coat.