Peel A Way paint removal system

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by minaret

Sand blasting (or any blasting) is a terrible way to remove material from a boat, as it has no provision for maintaining hull fairness. Unless, of course, it's a steel boat.

Yes of course, I should have made that distinction. The post was in response to RC's situation who has of course, a steelie

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by minaret

Sand blasting (or any blasting) is a terrible way to remove material from a boat, as it has no provision for maintaining hull fairness. Unless, of course, it's a steel boat.

On a steel boat, sand blasting leaves the 'fairing' material in place does it?

[Striker37]

If you are skilled at sand or wet blasting you know when to stop when you hit fairing material whether its on a steel,aluminum or fiberglass hull.If you are new to it you wont know what to look for and will blast right thru it providing more work for yourself or damaging your hull.I owned a auto/aircraft paint and body biz for well over 35 years and i own a all aluminum striker sportfish.I will be wet blasting the hull and upper structure and all decks.The faring material all has to go as i will replace it with a all metal type of material and the entire boat will be painted with a aerospace paint that will stay on for lifetime.

[Rustic Charm]

well, this is turning into a nightmare for me.

I was delayed getting to boat a bit today, and after a stop at Bunnings to get a cheap electric scrapper, which I thought I'd give a go for the anti foul, I got to the boat around 1pm. The electric scraper works, but it's going to be exceptionally slow progress removing anti foul with it.

I then tried the 40 grit sand paper on my 1/3 sheet orbital sander and after an hour got zero paint off the less than a meter I was working on. It's nice and smooth but I can't leave any of the that green on. This is turning into a disaster.

I'm seriously contemplating one of three options.

1. putting it back in the water as is and sailing it to a two effectively two days away where it can be sand blasted and completely repainted professionally with both masts in tact. Nothing for me to do.

2. pulling both masts out, which will require putting it back into the water temporarily, and then motoring 15 minutes to the nearby place where they can lift it out and put it in their shed to sand blast. And then the following:

........a. sandblast and they paint it to finished stage. Nothing for me to do but put the masts back in.
........b. sandblast and put epoxy primers on and then back to me to slip and paint and remast.

3. I put a clear coat of lacquer on the as is hull and rename the boat Picasso.


I've already ordered the paints, so I suspect I have to now go Norglass, so I'm hoping both places would let me supply all the paints.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

well, this is turning into a nightmare for me.
……………..

Hey RC,
Remember this exchange a week or so back.

Originally Posted by Wotname

+1, especially about caution using coppercoat over existing AF coatings. While I'm very happy with my coppercoat (7 years IIRC), I did start with a clean slate. FWIW, I initially allocated 3 days to remove 30 years of AF on a 30 footer; in fact it took almost 6 weeks.

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

6 weeks?

What were you using to remove it with? A butter knife

I'm intending to use 'Peelaway'. It's meant to be pretty good in removing 'paint' and is said to easily remove AF's

Well now you know why it took 6 weeks

Try to remember that it will come off - eventually.
And the final result will look bludi beautiful

[HappyMdRSailor]

The simple fact of the matter is there are no shortcuts here...

The effort has to come from your wallet... or...
forearms, shoulders, back...

No tool other than a big A$$ grinder with a pad & 36 is going to be more effective... At least on the ungooped side...

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

well, this is turning into a nightmare for me.

I was delayed getting to boat a bit today, and after a stop at Bunnings to get a cheap electric scrapper, which I thought I'd give a go for the anti foul, I got to the boat around 1pm. The electric scraper works, but it's going to be exceptionally slow progress removing anti foul with it.

I then tried the 40 grit sand paper on my 1/3 sheet orbital sander and after an hour got zero paint off the less than a meter I was working on. It's nice and smooth but I can't leave any of the that green on. This is turning into a disaster.

I'm seriously contemplating one of three options.

1. putting it back in the water as is and sailing it to a two effectively two days away where it can be sand blasted and completely repainted professionally with both masts in tact. Nothing for me to do.

2. pulling both masts out, which will require putting it back into the water temporarily, and then motoring 15 minutes to the nearby place where they can lift it out and put it in their shed to sand blast. And then the following:

........a. sandblast and they paint it to finished stage. Nothing for me to do but put the masts back in.
........b. sandblast and put epoxy primers on and then back to me to slip and paint and remast.

3. I put a clear coat of lacquer on the as is hull and rename the boat Picasso.


I've already ordered the paints, so I suspect I have to now go Norglass, so I'm hoping both places would let me supply all the paints.

Hard to advise you on these options without #'s to compare. What's the bottom line for each option?

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Wotname

Hey RC,
Remember this exchange a week or so back.





Well now you know why it took 6 weeks

Try to remember that it will come off - eventually.
And the final result will look bludi beautiful

Na, don't remember any of that

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by minaret

Hard to advise you on these options without #'s to compare. What's the bottom line for each option?

I don't know. I'll try to get some idea of costs tomorrow.

[GILow]

Err... a bit late to chime in here, but I wonder if my technique is any help? I don't know how hard our bottom paint was in comparison to what you face, but it seemed about "normal" from my limited experience of this stuff. That is to say, too hard to remove with a fingernail, but not as hard as an enamel or two pack.


I use a Porter and Cable drywall sander with something around a 40 grit paper. I run it connected to my $29 Godfrey's wet and dry shop vac. Between the two devices I am without doubt the noisiest bastard on the slips (actually, the P & C is pretty quiet, but the cheapo vac sounds like a wounded 747). But I am very tidy because the vac gets all the ground off paint before it hits the ground.


The combo is not particularly fast, but I think the slowness is brought about by the difficulty in applying significant force to the drywall sander, which has a side benefit of minimising clogging of the paper.


As a result I get incredible mileage from each sheet.


But at least with this setup I get to stand on the ground, a reasonable distance from the blast zone of the sanding head, and as a result I don't appear to be inhaling much of the byproducts. Of course I wear a full length envirohazard suit and a P2 mask.


I used this rig the first time we slipped the boat and ground back as far as I dared below the waterline. It had been 15 years since the bottom had been sandblasted (eek!) and epoxied by the previous owner. The whole monstrous slab sided thing only took about three days from memory.


For the last slipping I was just sanding back to the guide coat under the antifouling and it took about 3/4 of a day, most of which was taken up above the waterline where I had stupidly put multiple (3) coats of antifouling which never saw a drop of water in their life.


I am the only person I have seen using a drywall sander for this job and I worry that I am either very clever, or more likely, I am missing something important, because it seems the easiest way to me.


Matt

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by GILow

Err... a bit late to chime in here, but I wonder if my technique is any help? I don't know how hard our bottom paint was in comparison to what you face, but it seemed about "normal" from my limited experience of this stuff. That is to say, too hard to remove with a fingernail, but not as hard as an enamel or two pack.


I use a Porter and Cable drywall sander with something around a 40 grit paper. I run it connected to my $29 Godfrey's wet and dry shop vac. Between the two devices I am without doubt the noisiest bastard on the slips (actually, the P & C is pretty quiet, but the cheapo vac sounds like a wounded 747). But I am very tidy because the vac gets all the ground off paint before it hits the ground.


The combo is not particularly fast, but I think the slowness is brought about by the difficulty in applying significant force to the drywall sander, which has a side benefit of minimising clogging of the paper.


As a result I get incredible mileage from each sheet.


But at least with this setup I get to stand on the ground, a reasonable distance from the blast zone of the sanding head, and as a result I don't appear to be inhaling much of the byproducts. Of course I wear a full length envirohazard suit and a P2 mask.


I used this rig the first time we slipped the boat and ground back as far as I dared below the waterline. It had been 15 years since the bottom had been sandblasted (eek!) and epoxied by the previous owner. The whole monstrous slab sided thing only took about three days from memory.


For the last slipping I was just sanding back to the guide coat under the antifouling and it took about 3/4 of a day, most of which was taken up above the waterline where I had stupidly put multiple (3) coats of antifouling which never saw a drop of water in their life.


I am the only person I have seen using a drywall sander for this job and I worry that I am either very clever, or more likely, I am missing something important, because it seems the easiest way to me.


Matt

What is this Porter and Cable drywall sander ? Is it for plaster walls?

[GILow]

Yep, for plasterboard, or Gyprock if you want to be very Aussie. Drywall is the American name.


Bought it when I was building our house. Have found all sorts of silly uses for it since. It is one of the few tools I bought for the house building that I did not sell the moment I had finished the house.


One of these:


https://sydneytools.com.au/porter-ca...FUIIvAodcXoBmg

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by GILow

Yep, for plasterboard, or Gyprock if you want to be very Aussie. Drywall is the American name.


Bought it when I was building our house. Have found all sorts of silly uses for it since. It is one of the few tools I bought for the house building that I did not sell the moment I had finished the house.


One of these:


https://sydneytools.com.au/porter-ca...FUIIvAodcXoBmg

And what sort of sand paper do you attach to it? I mean, do they come round or do you cut them round?

How much does it actually take off?

Given the amount of wasted aleady I'm really hesitant about wasting any more dollars, so if I'm going to buy yet another 'tool', I want to be sure it will work this time. I have a wet and dry vac.

My anti foul is as you described. It's pretty hard, but not as hard as say auto enamel. It chips off easy but that's a slow process.

[GILow]

RC, I totally understand your dilemma. Sometimes it feels like throwing good money after bad.


The sandpaper used is the pre-cut and packaged hook and loop disk sort. Not my preferred option, but I found them at a reasonable price at the local decent tool store. I can't remember the price but it was not horrific, and the disks lasted so long I was very happy with the price in the end. I did buy a sort of adapter sheet of felt-like stuff that you could glue to normal paper but I have not needed it yet. The pad is pretty large, so you get a fair bit of sanding done at once. The more expensive sort of disks have pre-cut holes to improve dust extraction. I found the holes helped, but were not needed, and added too much to the cost.


As for what it takes off, I guess it is slow. Not as slow as the little random rotary orbitals, nothing is as slow (or horrible to use) as those. But it did take me three days to do the below waterline area of Manera. There's a photo in my profile albums of the underside of Manera if you want to use it as a comparison.

I just like it because it is low-stress. I can stand on the ground, rather than up a scaffold, and slowly grind away the paint. I go into a kind of trance doing this sort of work, my neighbour has commented on a few times, he has watched me working and wondered what the heck I was thinking about. "Nothing" usually.


I do note, I have not yet tried it on the topsides, only on old antifouling, and as I mentioned, I was only cutting through 15 years, not 30. But I did get back to the point where the pink epoxy layer was starting to be revealed all round.


I really wish someone else would comment on the usefulness of this method. I have no way of knowing if it is good or not as I have no comparison to any other method. It was what I tried first with our boat, and it worked well, so I did not feel a need to change.


Sorry if I am just adding to the confusion, but I thought it was worth mentioning. Maybe you can borrow one from someone? I loan mine out all the time, there's not much to go wrong with them. If you can think of a cheap way of getting it to Tassie you are welcome to try it, but the box is huge, about 6 feet long by nearly two feet square.


Matt

[Snowpetrel]

RC, what a shame the peel away didn't work, mind you I think from memory the day you applied it had about 28 deg and 15% humidity, at least down here, so maybe that's why it dryer out so quick?

Anyway, I ended up using a tungsten carbide scraper with a long handle, and a 180mm dander polished to clean up the mess I made.

A good one (I borrowed the Makita) will set you back about $350. A cheapie like the ryobi from bunnings is about $150. I have a ROC one, but It almost Certainly wouldn't cope with much real work, but if you're close to the store the warranty might make it work for a one off project. Gilows sander looks very neat. Hopefully he brings it over when he sails over this way...

Anyway, another thought is that the bottom Isnt really all that bad, or at least it wasn't when I saw it. No where near as bad as snowpetrels was for most of my ownership. I held off sandblasting because of cost, I also didn't want to loose any metal, and refairing would have been a huge job. In your case I would be reluctant to sandblast, as there didn't seem to be much rust or bare metal, just a bunch of blotchy stuff that could be repaired without taking the lot off if necessary.

You know when the antifoulings getting bad because half it comes off with the waterblaster!