Upper Hull | Lots More Primer

Lots of work, lots of time and very little of any visual interest to share... the only thing more tedious than watching paint dry is looking at photos of it in progress.

So I will keep this post short and sweet and to the point.

I initially thought that five coats of primer would be enough. I think that's what I did on the rudder.

Here is the upper hull after the five coats.

I took the opportunity of priming the drop boards and the tabernacle at the same time, to save time later. Here they are.

That's a gin and tonic in the centre of the table. A good antidote to the tedium of rolling on and tipping out many coats of paint.

Next task was to sand the upper hull to a smooth, flat surface using a P180 grit. This is what it looked like afterwards.

You can see that I sanded through the primer in quite a few places, albeit in only small patches. But previous experience taught me that those patches would show through the subsequent layers of gloss, no matter how many coats were applied.

So five more coats of primer were applied, making ten in all.

This is what the boat now looked like.

I am going to leave the primer to harden for a good long time before sending it again.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I intended to paint inside the companionway hood before installation, for ease of access.

You can see in the above pic that the interior of the hood and the exterior of the slide have received plenty of coats of gloss - ten, to be precise.

I did the same to the area of the cabin roof that will be covered by the hood. This is what it looked like.

Most of the hood's interior will not be visible, so it does not need to have the same high finish as the hull. So no polishing with wet and dry sandpaper, which is great news!

We are making satisfactory if somewhat slow progress. I want the finish to be as good as it can be, applying learnings made when painting the lower hull.

Onwards and upwards!