Sanding a hull??

[Jessie]

I've been restoring my seacraft from the ground up since October of last year. What a project.

Right now, I'm finally to a point where I've begun putting bondo on the boat. The previous owner of this boat must have had it painted about 4 or 5 times OVER the factory coat. There's stress cracks, deep gouges, missing pieces of the hull... lots of stuff to fill in. Also, the bottom must have had 6 coats of different very thick paint. So I tried to do it the right way and sand it all off with 60-80 grit in a flat motion, but on some points of the finish, before I had even gotten down to the primer in an adjacent area, I was hitting fiberglass. So, I kind of had to turn the pad at an angle, lest I was sanding the original fiberglass. Needless to say, I have high and low spots everywhere on the boat. So I'm covering the whole boat in bondo and basically going from there. So, yeah, try not to do what I did, hopefully whoever had the boat before you didn't paint over the original coat 4 or 5 times.

One thing that helps: I don't know what consists of the interior of your boat, but mine has been completely cut out, not including the front deck and the side walls. After I cut the floor out and redid the stringers and gas tank, I took the boat to my shop and flipped it over using a series of ropes, forklifts, and some scared friends. After I flipped it over, I put it back on the trailer upside down with the boat resting on some 4x4 pieces of wood. Sanding/finishing/painting is SOOOO much easier now. Just a thought.

Another piece of advice from the old man: If you get tired of doing it right, STOP doing it.