Peel A Way paint removal system

[Rustic Charm]

Hi all,

Today I started to use a product called Peel Away paint removal system. You can read about it at this link.

Peel Away Australia - Asia Pacific Pty Ltd

There is a video of a chappy using it on this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvYREV4nI_4

Now, I have a 36 foot steel ketch. I'm not sure if this product is going to work or not, but I'll certainly feed back my thoughts over the coming week. Because today I put it on one side. You can see the pictures. I purchased 15kg which some bright spark suggested would be plenty. I had to purchase an extra 20 sheets of paper for $60. 10 sheets came with the 15kg tub. The Lit' claims it's best to put the product on at 1 to 3 mm thickness with best performance at 3mm. Coverage of 3mm would about 1.5kg of product for 1 sqm. (Should have woken up at that point).

My 15kg tub and 30 sheets of 1sqm paper is enough to do one side only of my 36 footer, bottom and top sides.

My impression is that the antifoul loves it and so I'm betting it will work to take the anti foul off, but I doubt it's going to be really successful in taking the topsides off.

And my other impression is I cannot see how to get 3mm thickness on. It recommends a Nylon brush, which I purchased but I could not do more than half a square meter coverage without it drying on me and the instructions say don't let it dry. So, I went an purchased a small 150mm fabric roller and that seemed to work. I used the brush to spoon the product into the tray and then rolled it on. It took about 4 or 5 attempts to get it thick enough, which was only about 2mm. You will see in the picture above that the guy paints the entire boat with it, then goes over it again before putting the paper on. Well Bullocks! I had to role enough for one piece of paper only, put the paper on and then move onto the next section.

On Saturday I'll give it a go of taking it off. My suspicion is that it's going to work for the anti fowl but not the tops so much and the reason I think that is because the bottom where the anti foul is seems to have obsorbed more product and then stuck to the paper where on the top sides the product doesn't seem to have soaked into the paper. It did when I put it one, but but the time I did the whole side it was drying out.

More on Saturday, or Sunday coming.

Review so far doubtful.. I might have waisted $400.

[Snowpetrel]

Good on you, with luck it's going to work and save you the a lot of weeks of backbreaking, soul destroying work with a scraper. :thumbup: are you going to do the keel and rudder as well?

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[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Snowpetrel

Good on you, with luck it's going to work and save you the a lot of the weeks of backbreaking, soup destroying scraping. :thumbup: are you going to do the keel and rudder as well?

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If it works I will. The rudder I'm getting sand blasted. If it works I'll do the entire bottom. But today I ran out of product. 15kg was only enough to do what you see. And it came from Hobart so I'm going to have to get them to bus some up to me.

[Matt Johnson]

I can't wait to see the results. We need to strip the old Alwgrip and filler/primer from our topsides too. I was looking at using aircraft stripper, but Peel Away would be a much easier and safer option. The yard we are in does not allow media blasting, so it's chemical stripping or a ton of sanding in my future.

What type of topside paint is currently on the hull?

Matt

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by funjohnson

I can't wait to see the results. We need to strip the old Alwgrip and filler/primer from our topsides too. I was looking at using aircraft stripper, but Peel Away would be a much easier and safer option. The yard we are in does not allow media blasting, so it's chemical stripping or a ton of sanding in my future.

What type of topside paint is currently on the hull?

Matt

Kermit paint

It's a hard automobile paint that I was conned into buying by a wholesaler who didn't have any Marine Sigma paint at the time. It was entirely unsuitable.

The wet away will take it off, but it was really hard to get a suitable thickness of the stuff on that paint.

[Striker37]

For all the time it took for that process i could have done it in 1/4 of the time with 10 bags of sand,glass beads or baking soda with a sand blast attachment on my 4000 psi pressure washer.After im done i roll up the tarp under the boat and toss it in a dumpster.The paint is turned into dust sized particles.

[Don C L]

What a great idea. I need that stuff. I look forward to hearing your results! I'd like to know how it affects gelcoat.

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by Striker37

For all the time it took for that process i could have done it in 1/4 of the time with 10 bags of sand,glass beads or baking soda with a sand blast attachment on my 4000 psi pressure washer.After im done i roll up the tarp under the boat and toss it in a dumpster.The paint is turned into dust sized particles.

Not here you wouldn't have. It's not permitted.. otherwise I would have.

[sepeteus]

I also used peel away and all antifouling came off easy but as soon as we reached epoxy..... all trouble started. Ended up loosing time and money as the sanding was so extensive. Boatworks at Gold Coast would had allowed sand/soda blasting if proper 'tent' built around the hull. On 60footer that would had been AUD2500. That would had been money well spent!

[minaret]

If you just did a search on the forum first you'd find a bunch of threads on this. It's a terrible product, and a terrible way to go about that job. Super messy and time consuming, needs much more expensive product than advertised. At least two yards I have worked in banned this product after people tracked sticky goo all over the yard and heads while trying to scrape their bottoms. Even when the vast majority of bottom paint is chemically removed, you still have to sand the bottom to remove residue and provide tooth for prep. I find this takes about the same amount of time and prep as just sanding the paint off in the first place. I can strip most bottoms under 60' in one day with a softpad sander. Chemical stripping just adds a bunch of mess, time, and expense to the process. The goo you are left with vast quantities of is much harder to dispose of than sanding dust. There is a long list of flaws with this method, all of which have been pointed out here before...

[minaret]

Originally Posted by sepeteus

I also used peel away and all antifouling came off easy but as soon as we reached epoxy..... all trouble started. Ended up loosing time and money as the sanding was so extensive. Boatworks at Gold Coast would had allowed sand/soda blasting if proper 'tent' built around the hull. On 60footer that would had been AUD2500. That would had been money well spent!

I've posted pics of a proper bag setup before. Takes one man day and about $300-$400 in materials, depending on size of boat. Very easy to do, it's one of the jobs that new kids on the crew start on. A clean up crew job. Here yard rates run about $100/hr, so that's $1200 max to bag a bottom for grinding, peeling, or blasting.

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by minaret

If you just did a search on the forum first you'd find a bunch of threads on this. It's a terrible product, and a terrible way to go about that job. Super messy and time consuming, needs much more expensive product than advertised. At least two yards I have worked in banned this product after people tracked sticky goo all over the yard and heads while trying to scrape their bottoms. Even when the vast majority of bottom paint is chemically removed, you still have to sand the bottom to remove residue and provide tooth for prep. I find this takes about the same amount of time and prep as just sanding the paint off in the first place. I can strip most bottoms under 60' in one day with a softpad sander. Chemical stripping just adds a bunch of mess, time, and expense to the process. The goo you are left with vast quantities of is much harder to dispose of than sanding dust. There is a long list of flaws with this method, all of which have been pointed out here before...

Thanks Minaret, I am suspecting what your claiming is going to be the case. But, Now I've done it, I'll have to give it a go.

I did searches on CF and just did another one and couldn't find anything on this product. Perhaps I'm not too good at the search engine.

[SailFastTri]

Have used peel-away to remove heavy house paint. Awful stuff and very expensive compared with other chemical strippers that are just as effective. If you don't get the timing just right it can eat the substrate, even wood. BTW - It's made of lye.

[Rustic Charm]

Originally Posted by minaret

If you just did a search on the forum first you'd find a bunch of threads on this. It's a terrible product, and a terrible way to go about that job. Super messy and time consuming, needs much more expensive product than advertised. At least two yards I have worked in banned this product after people tracked sticky goo all over the yard and heads while trying to scrape their bottoms. Even when the vast majority of bottom paint is chemically removed, you still have to sand the bottom to remove residue and provide tooth for prep. I find this takes about the same amount of time and prep as just sanding the paint off in the first place. I can strip most bottoms under 60' in one day with a softpad sander. Chemical stripping just adds a bunch of mess, time, and expense to the process. The goo you are left with vast quantities of is much harder to dispose of than sanding dust. There is a long list of flaws with this method, all of which have been pointed out here before...

What sand paper grit would you use and what type of sander?

[Snowpetrel]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

What sand paper grit would you use and what type of sander?

I've used 36 grit on a Makita 7 inch sander/polisher. Damn near killed me, but I took a lot of epoxy of as well. Keen to hear what Minaret uses, that's a pretty good effort.

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