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!