Bottom paint removal?

[FishStretcher]

My opinion is to roll on some gel coat. You can't see most of what you will be doing when it is in the water, and you will likely bottom paint it anyway. The only place where smooth counts is the planing surface, and that's if you care and had a smooth surface before to compare to.



Gel coat is also relatively safe in terms of accidental exposure to wet material. It smells, but isn't poisonous like urethane paint or a sensitizer like epoxy.

Hermco mentioned the 3M vinylester below waterline marine filler if you need it. Or Mertons has hull and deck putty in polyester. I haven't used either, but just bought the filler from Mertons- just before I heard about the 3M from Hermco.

[CHANCE1234]

Cant I just roll and tip the gel coat than wet sand to polish without having to paint it after?

[Tugboat2]

After i fill the dings in mine with the 3m i am going to put interprotect 2000 i think its under $100 a gallon. According to a guy at jamestown it isn't shiny but it can be left as is or painted over with whatever you want.

[FishStretcher]

Originally Posted by CHANCE1234

Cant I just roll and tip the gel coat than wet sand to polish without having to paint it after?

My opinion- I don't see why not. Gel coat worked for the first 40 years, and I would/ will repair reapply gel coat when I need to.


Mine already have bottom paint, and it looks ugly. Right now, they are trailered boats, so if I were to do what you were doing, I would finish with gel coat and stop there. I would sand it flat, but I don't think I would wet sand mine. I get too little time off work to spend it anywhere but in the boat on the water, not under the boat, if I can possibly avoid it.

[Bushwacker]

I would highly recommend Signature Finish paint instead of gel coat, which I'm not sure you can apply over the Interprotect epoxy anyway. It's not porous like gel coat and much tougher, and one of the few urethane paints that will hold up under water. It's safe to roll & tip outdoors with a good NIOSH respirator. Mine came out fairly smooth and glossy just using a foam roller. It's also easy to mix up small quantities for touch up using small plastic syringes to get the exact mix of paint/thinner/catalyst.

[CHANCE1234]

Great advice everyone. I'll get a picture later but I literally have hundreds of dings in the fiberglass on the bottom that are now visible after removing 40 years of paint. I don't have the hundreds of hours it would take to grind them all out to the 12:1 ratio and fill with glass sand fair sand fair etc... Is it okay if I Clean em up with a dremel, clean, than use six 10 to fill and fair them?

[CHANCE1234]

These are the chips in the fiberglass I'm talking about. Everyone one of them are on the hull steps the length of the hull. Now what's the best way to fix em?

[Bushwacker]

Originally Posted by CHANCE1234

These are the chips in the fiberglass I'm talking about. Everyone one of them are on the hull steps the length of the hull. Now what's the best way to fix em? . . .

Chance, that white Fasco epoxy I recommended earlier in post #45 would work well on those dings. I had quite a few dings like that. It's less than $30 for a quart and is about the same hardness as gel coat when cured, so it sands real nice. If you look thru the pics of the sanding and fairing slideshow of my bottom painting project in the earlier post, you'll see that I used it all over the bottom to fill nicks, dings and low spots. I put Interprotect over the whole bottom to seal it under the paint, but if you plan to sand Interprotect before painting, do it the next day! It continues to harden and if you wait a week, it'll be like sanding granite! Denny

[CHANCE1234]

So I can just grind them out a little bit and fill them than sand before interprotect?

[Bushwacker]

I didn't really do much grinding on the dings and gouges, I just filled 'em, but I suppose some grinding wouldn't hurt. Most of what I had to deal with involved low spots in the gel coat that was fairly porous, so I wasn't too concerned with adhesion. Being epoxy, the Fasco stuff should have good bond strength. It seems to have about the same strength as Marine Tex when cured so it's pretty tough stuff, but it has a thick creamy texture when first mixed, so it spreads real nice. It's been 4 years since I did the bottom; I've run the boat well over 1000 miles since then, some of it in pretty rough stuff, and I've had zero problems with cracks or disbonding of the filler.