Upper Hull | Applying Gloss!

The big day came when I applied the first coat of white Epifanes 3248 gloss to the upper hull.

I employed the tools and techniques learned from practice on the companionway slide and drop boards.

The paint is thinned with 10% Epifanes Brush Thinner and applied with a Rota foam sleeve roller, and tipped out with an ANZA Elite Pro 100mm tipping out brush.

Here they are.

The brush is washed with thinners before use and kept with its own tray of thinned paint for tipping out.

I wash the brush with thinners when mixing a fresh batch of paint to keep it soft and supple.

This approach worked well in the trials and again when painting the upper hull.

Here is the first coat on the forward deck well and cabin roof, viewed from starboard.

This is what the cockpit looked like.

I did this over two days; one for the cockpit and one for the topsides. It took about nine hours in all.

There are some residual brush marks but they are not excessive, and I did not once lose the wet edge.

And the finish is flat and very shiny.

So overall I am pretty pleased with the outcome. I will leave the paint to harden for a couple of days before I sand it for the second coat.

I can hardly believe that we really are approaching the end of the repaint, and the boat is looking good!

Non-Slip Finish | Test Piece

The cockpit deck and the cabin roof would clearly need some sort of non-slip finish, because they will be very slippery when wet and potentially dangerous.

I had previously tried the original TeaMac non-slip paint on a test piece. The paint contains some sort of aggregate. It looks and feels like rough sand when cured.

This is it.

Not only was it unsightly, it would be unpleasant to sit or stand on.

So I tried rubber granules from Soft Sand, applied to the original gloss paint.

This is what it looked like.

This was an improvement on the grey paint, but I now thought it was rather coarse and didn't look professional enough.

So I asked Paul at BoatPaint UK what he would use, and he said that Awlgrip Griptex is the best non-slip product that they supply, so I purchased a quart can.

This is it.

It is applied by shaker onto wet gloss paint and allowed to dry. Then any loose compound is removed and another light coat of gloss is applied to seal the finish.

So I made a test piece, like this.

Here is the finished article.

The compound is very fine and has produced a flat, matt surface that looks good and is pleasant to the touch, so that is what I will use when fitting out is complete.

How amazing to be thinking this far ahead!

Transom Skirt | Cleaning Up Edges

I had been worried that the white primer on the transom skirt might have a 'stepped' edge due to several coats being applied without being able to pull the masking tape and flatten the edge between coats.

So I removed the tape, like this.

There was a slight step, but the edge itself was not as crisp as expected. It looked like this.

I has used 3M 244 Professional masking tape on this edge, which has worked perfectly until now on straight edges. But clearly it does not like curves, even as slight as the transom skirt.

So I cleaned up the edge and resolved to use 3M 218 Fine Line tape when re-taping.

My plan was to apply fresh tape and then carefully sand away the tape and the primer, thereby avoiding damage to the blue gloss.

Here I am retaping with 218.

I then tried sanding the tape and the primer, but it didn't work. So I had to accept that a small step on the edge was unavoidable.

The edge was now clean and sharp so I simply re-taped and re-covered the transom, like this.

The next paint to grace the upper hull will be its first coat of white gloss. Hooray!

Seatback Lockers | Priming Interiors (2)

Painting inside the seatback lockers was always going to be a challenge due to their inaccessibility.

Stripping away the old paint was bad enough, but adding fresh was difficult. In a previous post I described my first attempt using an ordinary brush, which failed.

I then found that a foam roller was a good way to prime the back and forward walls and the floor, but it was not possible to cover the remainder.

I tried using a foam brush with the handle shortened, to get into the corners. This is it.

It didn't work very well, and made lots of mess.

I then tried using a sash brush to get into the corners, but that was not effective either.

Finally I hit upon the idea of using a foam pad to simply dab the primer on.

Here it is, with the sash brush.

The foam pad worked well! I applied four coats of primer and moved on to the next task. This is one of the lockers looking aft to the boom gallows pole support bracket.

You can see that the interior has been fully primed.

Only the front and back walls and the floor need to have a show finish, and they will be easy to sand for the gloss.

Upper Hull & Rudder | Touching Up Patches

As described in a previous post, I sanded through to the substrate in places when sanding the primer on the upper hull to get it ready for gloss.

This is what the cockpit looked like when I had marked each bare patch with tape, and applied several coats of primer.

And this is the rudder, similarly marked.

I used P240 finishing paper to sand the the patches. It has a cloth backing so is very soft and flexible when sanding rounded or contoured surfaces.

This is it.

It can be easily torn into suitably sized pieces, like this.

This is the cockpit after all the touch ups had been finished.

And this is the rudder.

Amazingly, the hull is just about ready for gloss paint!

Drop Boards, Companionway Slide & Tabernacle | Gloss Paint Trials

It would soon be time to start applying gloss to the upper hull so I carried out some trials by painting the drop boards, companionway slide and tabernacle.

I had already established that the 'official' recommendation from Epifanes on how to apply gloss is not satisfactory. They tell us to apply paint with a foam roller, with no tipping out. As expected, this produces an 'orange peel' finish - see previous post on this subject.

So I wanted to test tipping out brushes and techniques, and the relative merits of Epifanes thinners and Easy Flow for thinning the gloss.

The slide received six coats of white gloss. I sanded with a P320 grit between coats, as recommended by Epifanes, and pulled all masking tape before the paint cured to preserve a flat edge.

This is the slide after sanding the second coat of gloss, and with tape applied for the next.

And here it is after the sixth coat, with the tape pulled.

The drop boards only received three coats while this was happening because I could only paint one side at a time.

They turned out pretty nice. Here they are.

The findings were as follows.

Epifanes Brush Thinners and Easy Flow both worked well. I added 10% to the paint in both cases, and when applied with the ANZA professional tipping out brush I could not tell the difference. Both maintained the wet edge, flowed out well and left residual brush marks.

I tried using a 1 1/2" (38mm) brush for tipping out, as I did when painting the bottom, but I found it left variable and visible brush marks. So that's a reject.

An online tutorial recommended soaking the tipping out brush in thinners before use. I tried this and also used a separate tray with its own supply of thinned paint to keep it wet.

This is the brush and roller.

This kept the wet edge extremely well, to the extent that the problem has been eliminated. I also found that dipping the brush in more thinners as soon as it started to stiffen kept it supple and soft.

So I will thin the gloss with thinners for the initial coats of paint, and with Easy Flow for the final couple of coats.

I am looking forward to painting the upper hull!