Companionway Slide & Drop Boards | First Gloss!

The companionway slide and both drop boards had been sanded to a P220 finish ready for gloss.

The time came for a practice with the new Epifanes mono-urethane to see how it behaved on application.

I had been viewing online videos on how to apply this paint, including two official Epifanes tutorials.

One is on the Epifanes website and shows how to paint a fibreglass kayak. The other is on the Dan Lee Boatbuilding website and shows how to apply mono-urethane on wood. Dan is the 'poster boy' for Epifanes products here in the UK, and is very informative.

However, one thing surprised me in both videos. The tutor did not tip out the paint with a brush. They simply rolled it on with a foam roller and left it to flow out of its own accord.

Oner viewer asked Dan about this and his reply stated that he rarely does any tipping out.

I was sceptical about this approach, but decided to give it a try anyway when practising on the companionway slide and drop boards.

I mixed the mono-urethane with 10% Epifanes Easy Flow to maximise flow out and carefully rolled on the first coat.

This is the companionway slide.

This is the upper drop board.

And this is the lower drop board.

And here is the slide with the masking tape pulled.

You can see even in these pics that the surface has an 'orange peel' finish, which is exactly what I expected.

It's nice and shiny and seems very hard after 48 hours, but it looks awful.

I can only assume that this is deemed acceptable by Epifanes, but I don't agree.

It was worth a try but we can now rule out 'roller only' application.

The next practice run will be done with a brush to tip out the gloss.

Onwards and upwards!