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!