Starting up again

Due to family issues we haven't been able to do much for the last three weeks. Had a week long visit from my parents on their way to the New Brunswick, and my sister (who was living with us for longer than she wanted to) moved out to her new apartment here in Ottawa. Between moving, entertaining and trying to do real work there was no time left over for boat work.

Since I last posted I tried spraying the boat in my garage in a jerry-rigged spray "area" (I'm not going to dignify this effort by calling it a booth). I learned a lot about spraying paint, although not that much learned was good. The results had too much orange peel and the overspray and paint fog was miserable. I could thin the paint more, increase spray pressure, install a air movement system and buy a decent respirator, but the expense/effort of creating an environment for success is too high.

I'm going to wetsand the boat back flat and find me an auto body shop where I can either use the booth for a couple coats of paint or have them spray the boat for me. My quality expectations are too high for what I can do in the garage. My first (not quite honest) thought was to paint the boat in a booth but not tell - so people would think my garage capable of high quality work.

All the paint work done to date will be counted as primer.

Shifting gears

I've been happy with the oil-based paint going on Thomas' boat. Notes for posterity: the Penetrol does enhance paint flow and extends the cure time, but it somewhat dulls the gloss of the paint. It's great for help to keep the paint flat and reduce brush strokes, but it won't be in the last coat or so. I'll thin the paint with thinner instead.

Spent some time early this morning (5:30-6:30AM) before the family got up wet sanding the boat with 220 to flatten out the brush strokes and the edges of the roll & tip joins. It is now ready to spray and I hope I get the kind of finish I anticipate. If all goes well this boat should be about as good as you can get in a garage build without a spray booth. I'm going to prep the side panels of the cockpit later today with primer so they can be sprayed as well at the same time. They aren't attached to the boat permanently yet, so I'll spray them before they get epoxied in place. I'll protect the gluing edge with tape so I'm not epoxying a painted surface.

I was able to get good (but not spectacular) results with the roll & tip technique, but not as good as you can with spray. The paint I'm using has a little bit too much drag on the brush. I imagine I could get it a little better if I thinned the paint a little and really concentrated on low brush pressure when tipping the roll back into the wet edge. I'd also have to keep moving the wet edge location between coats. So far it has hit in around the same place each coat, making a little thicker area that needed to be sanded down.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Two days into the red oil paint and things are looking up. Coat number (three) four is on the boat and it looks dramatically better than it did after five coats of latex. Since it IS red paint, it is going to take a couple more coats to completely even out the color, but the dark gray primer really is an improvement on the light pink.

I've been able to do two coats per day. It takes about 30-40 minutes per complete cycle, sanding and then wiping down the boat with paint thinner, drying it and then painting & clean up. Then wait for 14 hours and repeat. The 400 grit sanding pass needs to be light, as without 24 hours it would be possible to go too far and cause problems. I've been storing the foam roller in a Ziplock bag between coats and cleaning the bristle brush and wrapping it in Varsol dampened paper towels and storing it in a Ziplock as well.

The oil-based paint is flatter, harder and better to work with in every way. Sands like real paint. The roll & tip works much better with the oil paint, and I'm using Penetrol as a flow enhancer with the paint. I'm going to switch to a flat foam brush tomorrow from the bristle one I'm using to see if the brush strokes are reduced. It will be interesting to see how good I can get the surface before I switch to spraying the paint.

I don't want to use the spray until necessary as I have a healthy respect for the damage that can be done with overspray.

Penance

I've sanded away the latex paint as punishment for my childlike belief in things I read on the Internet. As much of my life is on-line both work and after hours, I should know better. Since I'm publishing this on the Internet for others to read and learn from, a cautious reader may be inclined to believe none of this.

Went to see Benny Moore yesterday and bought some GOOD dark gray primer. It took a good chunk of the last two days to sand the latex off Thomas' boat. Not fun. Sanding is the long, endless dark tunnel you must go through in building a boat and I have been through the tunnel twice on this project. Once getting the boat prepped for the latex red, and now once getting the boat prepped for the next try with alkyd (oil based) paint.

One of the benefits of making mistakes like this is that the boat gets sanded a lot more than would have if I had been happy with the first try at red latex. The boat is much better off in the fairness and smoothness department. I'm also getting better due to practice. One of the important lessons learned in painting is knowing when to stop, and avoiding putting too much paint on just because there is a little left in the tray.

Today I'll skim the gray with 400 grit and then put on the first coat of red paint.

<pause of several hours>

The first coat of red paint is on. It looks far better on the dark gray than it did on the pink. Being oil paint, it is slow to dry and has already captured a few hairs and a couple bugs. I've used tweezers to remove the stuff I noticed, but it is what it is. I'll skim the first coat of red with the 400 tomorrow morning early and put another coat on. Oil based paint is a patience game - it is going to take 4 to 5 more days to get where we need to be. It is still red paint after all.

This paint is drying harder, flatter and with more sheen than the latex did after five coats. I'm happy so far.

Abandon hope, all ye who enter ....

I've lost faith in latex. I'll reserve it's use for protecting protruding body parts while applying epoxy and during other dangerous activities where bodily harm may result from inappropriate contact.

Maybe it was my brief use of the nap roller (see red paint rule #10), but I just can't live with what the latex paint is doing to Thomas' boat. Latex may look great on an accent wall, garage door or window trim, but it looks like crap on a boat. And it is easily marred and scratched.

I've been hemming and hawing about the latex paint for days. It has tested my faith and I now have to sand it all off (five coats) and start over. With oil based paint. I'll prime with a good primer and then make sure there is a final dark gray coat of primer before I start with the Senator's red. It has to be done right. I didn't want to go to all this effort, and a less obstinate person would just prime on top of the latex and get on with it. I'm pigheaded and it doesn't matter to me that I look like an idiot.

This exercise is a great demonstration on why you have to take stuff on the Internet with a grain of salt. The arguments posted FOR latex paint included advocates like Harold "Dynamite" Payson, Phil Bolger and many others. Some of these guys are card carrying and/or honorary members of the Loyal Order of Cantankerous Maine Boat Builders! Latex may be good enough for a rowing skiff or a gunkholing tender, but it sure isn't good enough for me.

You should have seen Thomas' face when he walked around the corner from the school bus this afternoon and saw me longboarding the Senator's red latex off the bottom of his boat. I told him the crappy paint wasn't good enough for him, and I was going to fix it. He said, "That's good Dad - go for it. I'm going to go have a snack." He knows me well enough to tolerate and humor my obsessive nature.

I really wanted to stick with the environmentally & kid friendly latex paint as part of the goal of making this parent/kid work project. I guess that just like my use of epoxy, my desire for long lasting quality trumps my ability to follow the project plan.

--
Bill

Doubts are creeping in

My last post about the red paint blues has come back to haunt me. Remember my Red Paint Rule 11 about faith? I sure need some right now.

Latex paint IS (may be?) appropriate for use on a boat, and there are long standing discussions on the Internet regarding this. Duckworks and many home builder sites and blogs have talked through the benefits and compromises of using latex paint. Latex paint does not behave like either oil-based paint or the traditional two part paints used in marine applications. There's the environmental issues of toxic paints and off-gassing from their curing process versus the finish challenges and softness of less environmentally dangerous latex paint.

Thomas' boat is going to be dry sailed, so it won't sit in the water for extended periods. This cuts out the need for marine paint. It will be moving around on a dolly and roof racks a lot, so the paint has to be durable and tough.

Therein lies the source of doubt for me. Latex exterior paint is flexible and somewhat soft. It's easily damaged by rough surfaces and scrapes. It is also very difficult to get a smooth, hard, flat surface on. Latex house paint generally rolls on pebbled and rougher to the touch than oil based paints. Identifying oil based exterior paints is easy - they are much flatter and harder than latex - and they chip and break instead of bend and bubble like latex.

I'm used to hard, flat, smooth boat surfaces and I'm concerned about my ability to get a smooth, flat surface out of latex. I'd really like hard as well. I've been going around the house running my hands over latex painted walls and such, reassuring myself that it DOES get hard over time and it can be nicely finished. Perhaps it is a function of the miserable red latex paint, but getting flat, smooth and hard may be a tall order.

I've done a quick 400 grit sanding pass on the foam-rolled Floetrol-enhanced latex surface on Thomas' boat after 48 hours of curing. The latex sanding results in lots of little rolled "sausages" of sanding debris building up under the long board. It brushes off and isn't building up and clogging the sandpaper, but it sure isn't like sanding normal paint. I'm basically knocking the tops off the pebbled surface, trying to smooth and flatten the paint for spraying. I sure hope spraying results in a flatter, more self leveling surface than rolling does. If it doesn't I'll be doing a lot of sanding to remove the latex experiment!

For most people, living with (and liking) the latex surface as it is now may not be a critical issue. I want Thomas' boat to be competitive with Optis and able to sail with O'pen Bics without performance embarrassment, so getting the paint surface right is important to me. I'm also a bit worried about my work area and the trouble overspray causes. I don't want everything in the garage to have a fine red mist coating, but I also don't want to do this outside and turn the wet paint boat into the largest no-pest strip on record. I can envision a whole bunch of miserable insects with their feet stuck in the drying latex surface of Thomas' boat. One of the closet doors I sprayed latex on showed permanent evidence of a long insect death march across the drying surface ending in a collapse of the now-white insect carcass. I wish I had a paint booth to spray in!

I'm thinking of spraying the boat outside and then picking it up and moving it in the garage to dry. This is a compromise that may work. I'll place the boat on a tarp on the ground so the spray is controlled and not three feet above ground, reducing the potential of drifting overspray hitting neighbor's cars (or ours for that matter).

I'm thinking of trying the Fleecy fabric softener trick as well - the latex paint sure needs help to self-level like normal oil based paint.

I'll post results once I try thing. Cross my fingers!

The red paint blues

First, if you ever think of painting a boat red, get some beer, sit down and drink it till the thought does away. Red paint ain't great. Please note these pictures show an unsanded, rolled surface! It will not look like this when done.

Here are my new rules about red latex paint:

1. Do not use red paint
2. If you are reading this item this refer to rule one
3. Red paint requires many more coats than any other color to reach the state where it is even worth sanding
4. Floetrol is worth it's weight in gold. It makes red latex paint actually behave somewhat like other paints. Without the Floetrol red latex paint is more like applying gravel-enhanced plaster with a dirty trowel
5. Never let anyone see the first two coats of red paint. It is embarrassing and makes you look like you finger painted to get a tie-dyed effect
6. Primer should be absolutely pre-tinted. The best recommendations I've seen are to tint the primer a medium to dark gray. Any light colored areas underneath red paint will show through four layers of red paint. My pink tinting wasn't bad, but it needs to be absolutely uniform or the red paint (which uses a transparent jewel tone paint tint) shows EVERYTHING. If I were doing this again I would use a dark gray tinted unsanded primer layer underneath the red. Unsanded because a consistent color base makes the red look far better than an uneven color base.
7. Latex paints surface dry in minutes, but take 48 to 72 hours to cure enough for sanding. Don't bother trying to seriously sand without a 48 hour delay to cure, or you are asking for trouble
8. I didn't bother spraying the red paint for the first few coats, it would not have been worth the effort. I rolled it on with a foam roller. I figured I should keep on putting on paint till at least the color was consistent and worth sanding before I bothered to spray.
9. The foam roller - Floetrol enhanced red paint had an alarming tendency to show a lot of bubbles on first pass rolling. Subsequent re-rolling of the area with less and less pressure on the roller reaches the point where the bubbles are eliminated, but the first few times you put paint of the boat are scary
10. Nap rollers are tools of the devil and should not be used with red paint unless you are trying to call a demon up from hell
11. Faith is required to work with red paint
12. Most of the people in paint departments at building centers don't know what they are doing from experience - they've sat through seminars, but haven't actually done anything. If I had talked to someone who had actually painted red latex with a good quality finish result they would have told me about the dark gray primer idea. The guy I talked to said my "tint it pink" idea was the right thing to do. Learn from my experience!

I'm currently waiting through a curing delay for 48 hours so I'll report on the next step - spraying after I sand. I've got lots of other jobs to do in the mean time. In this second photo you can see the effects of Thomas learning how to spray paint closet doors on the driveway. He keeps forgetting to release the trigger at the end of the paint pass. No serious harm done!

Put the boat in the driveway to have the sun help the cure process. It's got to be better than sitting in a dark garage.

It's not staying pink!

Here are some pictures of Thomas' Microskiff in primer. I tinted the primer pink as the boat is going to end up red. At this point I've done a few cycles of primer/sand/repeat moving from the pre-primer 80 grit to 120, prime - 120 a couple times (where the primer was almost completely sanded off). Once I did the primer, all the faults and problems invisible (or ignored) during fairing became very ugly and obvious. Little things like chine edges and surface smoothness etc.

Right now the boat has received it's last (I hope) coat of primer and has been sanded to 220 grit before this coat of paint was hand rolled on. It's pretty good right now and I'll have a go at 400 grit later today. Once the 400 is done I'll start with the final red color. Thomas chose the official Ottawa Senator's hockey uniform red color for his boat. Thomas is a die hard Sens fan and most of his personal decorating choices are based on this.

Like every fairing/sanding job, the more you do, the more you see and it's easy to get stuck in a endless repeat cycle. My time in the garage is getting shorter, so I've got to get this thing painted and done soon. There is more work to do on the cockpit, rails and the mast partners, so the exterior hull paint has to move along.

It's good enough to move on to the next step. Thomas and I have put probably more effort into the fairing and sanding than most homebuilders will bother - I'm hoping this boat is finished well enough to look good in pictures so that we can use it as an example for people interested in building a Microskiff with their kids.

The painting process (and spraying latex) has been an interesting learning process. I cornered one of the local paint store proprietors and asked about spraying latex - he's got a couple commercial contractors working with his paints that do it. He said that there is a latex additive like Penetrol (used as a flow enhancer with oil based paints) called Floetrol. I bought some and will be using it with the final costs in the sprayer. He also said the faux finish painters use a couple capfuls of Fleecy fabric softener in their latex paint for both flow enhancement and slowing the drying process a bit. Part of the problem with latex is that it almost dries as it leaves the sprayer and it doesn't self-level as nicely without help.

Testing 1 2 3 ....

The outside of Thomas' boat is ready for primer. This means I've tired of sanding enough to lower my expectations to meet my impatience in the middle.

I want to spray the boat, figuring spray will have a better chance of a good finish than roll & tip hand painting. I bought a cheapo spray gun at Home Depot and have been experimenting by painting closet doors from the basement in the driveway. This solves two problems - I accumulate some experience spraying latex, and I get one of those five year old items off the list of incomplete projects my wife keeps reminding me of.

The first door turned out surprisingly well - the coverage was good, even and it sprayed without spitting, globbing or causing any trouble. Took a little longer to dry than I expected, but I'd added 10% more water to thin the paint for spraying. Guess that extra water needs time to evaporate. The down side of the spraying is overspray - the driveway looks a little worse for the wear (but it's latex), so I'll probably re-coat the driveway sealer when all painting is done. I also don't want to hit any cars with overspray.

I'll be trying the boat soon.

Epoxy will show your faults

Thought I was making progress with the fairing and sanding of the outside of the hull with Thomas. Decided to clean off the dust and give it a coat of epoxy for finish sanding before painting the outside of the boat. Rolled on the clear epoxy and every fault, dip, hump, scratch, dog hair and uneven surface came to light making the boat look like it had never been sanded.

Our sanding was just at the point of going too far - breaking through the previous epoxy layer into the bare plywood in a couple spots. I guess this means another fairing compound pass now that I can see all the trouble spots that had been hidden by dust.