Barrier coat opinions

[Sailshabby]

Getting ready to barrier coat my sailboat. Big 3 appear to be Interlux, Petit, and oddly enough, Sherwin-Williams. Pros and cons to each of course, ranging from price to advertised thickness to ease of application.

I’ve ground out the blisters and will be skimming a coat of West epoxy first, then moving to the barrier coats. I plan on rolling the coats.

Online opinions vary, so I figured I’d ask here. Professionals go to the head of the line, those that used X and have experience follow right behind!

Thanks

[coopec43]

For what it is worth I used plastic mirror off-cuts from a jobber's recycle bin to paint the bottom of my full length keel.

The first coat of the anti fouling Altex No 5 had to go on the barrier coat before it had cured. If it was possible to alternate the color of the anti-fouling barrier coats it would help keep track af where you had painted.

[Lee Jerry]

We used the Petit Protect, but that is because we chose to use Petit antifouling and therefore used their matching barrier coat. We were also able to buy both on a pretty decent sale (but still quite expensive).

Application was fairly straight forward following the directions, mostly just lots of mixing and taking care of the timings (between barrier coats, between last barrier coat and first antifouling, and between layers of antifouling). Also need to watch the weather in there, too. Prep took a lot longer than barrier coats and paint combined.

Note that the paint was supposed to have twice the coverage of the barrier coat, but we used almost the same amount of each. (So either the barrier coat was thinner than supposed to be, or antifouling thicker, or a little of both. )

You're missing a step here:

Originally Posted by Sailshabby

I’ve ground out the blisters and will be skimming a coat of West epoxy first, then moving to the barrier coats. I plan on rolling the coats.

Between the neat epoxy skim coat and the barrier coat you want to fill the blisters with thickened epoxy (before the skim coat sets), assuming you want a smooth surface.