Basic Painting Questions

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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Wed Oct 28, 2020 10:43 am

Googled it. I'm using TotalBoat TotalFair, and their literature says for below the waterline buy their special sealing compound (so I'll just neat epoxy it.) For above waterline, it says just prime and paint.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Tue Nov 03, 2020 11:48 am

What is this thing called? It's the ledge where the rubber "bumper" is attached that goes around that boat. Seems like it's where the two sheets of laminate of the deck and topsides are stapled together.

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I've been putting off sanding it because it kills my orbital sanding discs really fast, what with the small edge and the staples. It's in mostly good condition, except some spots that need fairing on the bottom of it. Also, the outside edge of this ledge seems to be pretty raw laminate/wood with little epoxy, so I guess I'll just paint a thin coat of epoxy back on there (don't want to make it took thick so the bumper still fits,) before priming and painting?

Funny story. This whole time I thought "neat epoxy" meant epoxy resin without hardener. I put some on my hull patch this way yesterday and then for some reason couldn't google "how long does neat epoxy take to cure." Finally I found somewhere that explains that neat epoxy is interchanable with epoxy without any fillrs. LOL. Kinda like how this "molly flanagan" woman keeps sending me e-mails and the wifes getting suspicious ;)
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby bilbo » Tue Nov 03, 2020 3:11 pm

I can't help with the proper name of that joint, but do you have an air compressor? If so, and it's big enough to run a die grinder, there are small sanding discs/pads that can go in a die grinder. They are available at Harbor Freight and many other places, and of course online, in many grits. They seem to hold up better than the pads for my RO sanders. If no air compressor, I believe electric die grinders are out there too but they are a bit clunky to use. I like the air ones better as they are small and light so less fatigue.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Wed Nov 04, 2020 4:15 pm

I’m working on getting the deck ready for cleaning and painting today. Faring divots, adding 3M filler to the cutting edge where the rebar is exposed, and I was also going to add some of that same filler to where the mast hole in the deck had some dents and so on. However, when I started pulling away the dents in the mass hall they were soft material.Is this supposed to be the case? Is there some sort of impact dampening material that’s added to the mast hole?
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby GreenLake » Wed Nov 04, 2020 4:24 pm

Not on a DaySailer, but yours is a SailStar, so we wouldn't be able to tell you. Could it be something that a previous owner did? In any case, nothing seems to be wrong with the idea of getting a smooth hard surface and then, if needed, you can always put some "padding" down later.

Before covering any exposed iron, make sure you treat it with some rust-converter.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Wed Nov 04, 2020 7:56 pm

Ah shoot. Ah well, I guess now that I've already sealed in the rebar with a layer of 3m filler, I've bought myself a ticket to learning how to pry it all out in a couple years and replace it. That being said, it didn't look in that bad of condition. Not much rust, and what rust there was I ground off with the angle grinder attachment I used to sand that area. Not the same as chemically altering the rust though, I'm sure.

Found another surprise today.

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This is what the coaming bolts onto, and is attached to the deck on the sides, but is just a right angle piece of wood covered on both sides by glass/gelcoat. The gelcoat/glass is fine, but the wood is SUPER rotted, so much so that I can just pull it out through the bottom where it's exposed. I guess this happened because some of the fiberglass on each side and bottom delaminted and let moisture in. Funny enough, it was just this side that was rotten, both the other side of the boat, as well as the identical coaming-holder to the aft were both mostly fine.

If it wasn't only open from the bottom, I'd just soak the whole thing in Rotfix and fiberglass over it. But I can't get Rotfix to soak upwards, and I'm not going to flip the boat. I don't have experience removing structural wood from the boat and replacing it, and especially with this piece being attached to the deck at a 90 degree angle, I don't even know how that would work. It seems like, besides being glassed to the deck on its underside, it's also glassed in on the sides.

Another thought was to sand/pry away the fiberglass/gelcoat on the front face of this thing, scrape away/rotfix any rotted wood, and then replace it piecemeal or wholesale with filler (sculptwood or 3m) just like I did on the transom. Since it the wood seems to be sandwiched in on both sides with fiberglass, I could use the backing as a canvas to "repaint" wood onto, and then reglass the front, fair it up nicely (especially on that angle..) and maybe that's easier than replacing the whole piece?

Or I could just fiberglass over the rotten wood and pretend like it's not a problem. It's definitely not very weak, although this structural piece is noticeably weaker than the same one on the port side.

I'm tired of finding new things wrong everyday! Lol.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby GreenLake » Wed Nov 04, 2020 9:03 pm

Have you tried locally reversing the gravity gradient?

:)

I would:
  1. try to determine the extend of the worst
  2. cut the inside fiberglass and wood where you think you might need to replace
  3. bevel the cut edges of any fiberglass
  4. make up a piece of exterior grad plywood to fit the removed
  5. glue in place w/ epoxy
  6. seal any other sides in epoxy
  7. re-laminate to restore the fiberglass sheath

Lots of steps, but none that are very complex. The "woodworking" is limited to cutting plywood to where it fills what you've removed. There's no need to try for tolerances much better than 1/8", not only will the epoxy bridge that, but the piece you are repairing has backing and once you re-laminate the front, support from that side also. If you don't have an electric jigsaw, even a coping saw would do for cutting the replacement.

The way this is designed, if I understand correctly that there is fiberglass in back as well, the plywood would be like the core in a sandwich. If that's the case, much of the strength comes from the skins being spatially separated (and for that to work, the bond to the wood needs to be good - another reason to cut away crumbling wood. If one side is better than the other and you need to preserve your limited capital of project time, then I'd fully understand if you focused only on the worst areas.

Other people might tell you to place your cuts at the top of the coamings and taking all the wood out. That would ensure you don't have to do it again in your next three lifetimes, but some of us are more hesitant about radical surgery. Just season to taste and go with it.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Wed Nov 04, 2020 9:41 pm

Okay dokey.

1. Does BCX pressure treated count as "exterior grade" plywood. I'm new to the buying lumber business. Also, should I be using waterproofed plywood on the "footboards" that I've now decided to seal + paint with Pettit's products? Because I already bought a normal sanded pine BC board for that, but since I may need to get a BCX 4 x 8 anyways I could always use the rest of that for the footboards.

2. How would I cut the existing plywood/inner fiberglass out? I live on a farm with a lot of tools, so we might have it. Never used a router before, is that it? Just score it with a rotary saw set really low? Of course there's sanding too though that would take a while...
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby GreenLake » Wed Nov 04, 2020 10:43 pm

A simple guide to the rating systems can be found in many place. Here's just one: https://www.h2ouse.org/bcx-plywood/

The "X" speaks to water exposure (transient). There are two aspects to it, one is whether the plywood uses glues that hold up when the wood gets wet. The other is whether the wood will start to rot. I think the X addresses mainly the former, while the pressure treatment addresses the latter.

Some marine plywood is so good, it can float on the ocean and be water/salt logged when it washes up on a beach but doesn't delaminate. We sometimes find bits of it when beachcombing.

Pressure treated BCX should be fine for things like coamings, because they really don't get immersed. For what you call you footboards, you can get immersion (never say never on a flooded cockpit over the lifetime of your boat). For those, the key is sealing the wood, so if the edge or lower part of the face is immersed in water the wood doesn't wick up the water.

Now, I'd argue (from principle, not from experiment) that the added benefit of pressure treated wood is less if you seal it anyway.

The BC grade is correct for your footboards, because one side should be paintable and nice. That the grade allows some voids in the center isn't ideal, but I think survivable. For the coamings, sheathed as they are, you wouldn't even need to have one side "nice", but there's also no reason to go down in grade.

Scoring with a shallow setting on a saw might work. One tool that is great for this kind of work is the Fein Multimaster (or cheap knockoffs thereof). These tools have a vibrating, not a rotating blade. You'll need to get a blade that won't dull, no matter which type of saw you use. The vibrating tools usually allow access to tighter corners and have angled blades that let you cut, say, flush in parallel with another surface.

A final option would be an angle grinder. Just grind through the fiberglass and top layer of the wood and then use a chisel to finish.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Thu Nov 05, 2020 10:55 pm

Ah angle grinder, good idea. I've been learning to use my cordless one, very cautiously, to sand various things that need really intense sanding. I have some cut off discs too, and if I'm careful I might be able to manage that.

Re: plywood for the coaming backings. I'll have a bunch of extra AC sanded pine from the 4 x 8 I got for the footboards, so I think I'll just cut a piece of that out and clearcoat it. I have almost a whole quart of it since I decided not to clearcoat + WR-LPU my coamings because I once I experimented with the clearcoat on a small project and did the math, I realized I'd need about $200 just to have visibly wood coamings.

I recently learned it would've looked shitty anyways, since there were places in my wood that needed to be filled (old wood filler falling out, plus where I gouged into it my first time using a pressure washer.) I thought Minwax stainable wood filler would help me hide it (fill + stain + clearcoat/LPU) but upon further research, Minwax's "stainable" wood filler is anything but consistent in how it stains.

Instead, I'm going to use Pettit's wood sealer to seal the coamings (and the footboards) and then just paint them with the leftover Easypoxy I'll have. Way cheaper, and will probably look better in the end. Still using that "stainable" wood filler to cover the gouges, but I learned too late that Minwax's Premium Wood Filler is a much better, two-part product that would probably hold up a heck of a lot longer. Live and learn.
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Thu Nov 05, 2020 11:23 pm

Had to open a new GelMagic tip today, so wanted to make the most of it and use it on a bunch of different things I was going to "Magic." One of which is the aformentioned coamings, which were actually constructed out of two pieces, one that lies on top of the deck and actually holds most of the weight by being bolted into the deck from below. I really like the original coamings because having this extra over-deck piece allows them to have a slightly back-learning slant. Plus I didn't want to buy new wood and cut everything when these are fine with a little care.

The thing is, there is some separation between the two pieces of the coaming, a crack. On top, this crack seems to maybe have rotted at some point, as the PO gouged out a 1/2" wide strip (inconsistently) along this crack and then filled it with wood filler. Or maybe it hadn't rotted, as I saw no signs of rot after taking out that old filler, maybe they just wanted the filler to have a better bite. Anyways, for resealing that crack on the top - easy - just take out old filler and add new. Done.

The bottom and sides are another thing. So for the bottom, I thought to essentially do a bit of a fillet with GelMagic, and then cover that with glass tape and epoxy. (Actually, I'll be glass tape and epoxying over the wood filler on the top crack too.) I did that tonight, but was disappointed by how poorly the glass tape absorbed the epoxy. It was 4 oz bidirectional. After reading Amazon reviews, seems like I wasn't the only one with that problem. For covering fillet seams like this (and the upcoming one on my footboards) what type/weight of glass tape is good? I'll probably order my next batch from S3.

Here's a shot pre-Magic/tape. You can see the front of one coaming (with the new wood filler on the top of the joint) and the back of the other coaming (with the back crack of the joint circled.)
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]

And then here's the result after my meh job of sealing them:

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I used two slightly different techniques. The back coaming I "filleted" how I think fillets work: I ran a bead of GelMagic on the crack, didn't wait for it to gel or anything (is that right?,) and then used one of my mixing sticks to sort of smooth it out (it was a narrow bead, maybe 1/8") and then threw on my dry glass tape, and wetted the glass tape from the top. It took a LOT of work to get the glass tape to absorb the epoxy, but eventually it did seem to wet down quite well, and this might be just because of the quality of the tape I have.

In the front coaming, I ran a bead of GelMagic on the crack, DIDN'T smooth it with the stick, but just left it as the long bead, and then also pre wetted the board itself, like I normally would when I put a fiberglass patch on something. This, however, perhaps again because of my tape, didn't really help the wet down process when I put the dry tape on and then painted epoxy over top of it. I'm worried this second board won't fit quite as well onto the deck, as the 90 degree angle of the joint might be a bit obstructed since I didn't smooth the bead of GelMagic out. We'll see tomorrow. Either way, not a big deal, as I'll probably do what the PO did and seal the space between the back part of the coaming and the deck with silicone.

Was an interesting experiemtn, and leaves me with what I'd do if this was me doing my real-deal fillet on my footboards where any mistakes I make will be much more visible (albeit Easypoxied over.)

1. How do you use glass tape? I assume you don't pre wet out the whole 8' tape, nor use it in short lengths, but do what I did, and either wet the surface it attaches to and then on top, or just on top?

2. When filleting (with Gelmagic, EZ fillet, or whatever) how is the filleting compound and tape supposed to interact with each other. I found this on S3's site about EZ Fillet:

"Alternatively, the tape can be applied after EZ-Fillet starts to get stiff. Use SilverTip Laminating Resin for this purpose and work EZ-Fillet under the wet tape for a smooth, bubble-free composite."

So wait for the fillet compound to start to cure, and then wet glass tape onto it and "work EZ-fillet under the wet tape." What does that mean? Are they talking about using the glass tape to sort of mold the fillet into shape somehow? That sounds like a mess.

3. I know I should've removed more epoxy, as I didn't really work to "drag" it with my plastic scraper, as the glass tape tended to want to move around a lot when I did this. Same for my GelMagic -- I was very quick with my fillet technique, and I don't get how there can be so much wiggle room to so carefully sculpt this little line of sticky goop. Or maybe it was because I didn't let it start to set first?
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby GreenLake » Fri Nov 06, 2020 12:00 am

Gel-Magic is non-sagging, but it's not really great filleting material, since you want the bulking effect of the wood dust. However, while I did help a friend fix rot damage from exposure on a wooden (plywood) dinghy once, it's too long ago for me to accurately remember what we did (and I didn't report it here, not being related to a DS :( ).

The point of filleting is twofold. One, it widens the joint, so strengthens the connection. Might not be equally important for all joins. The other thing a fillet does is to limit how sharply you need to bend/fold the fiberglass to make it connect two pieces. If you let the fillet "gel" it won't move when you apply other stuff on top of it. The thing in those instructions I find a bit puzzling but interpret that having a bit of a fresh layer makes sure the tape is well and evenly supported.

So, if you used GelMagic as a poor man's fillet for a 90 degree join, then, if you were dead set on following those instructions, you would let the fist applied gel, then add a bit more right before you place your tape. Taping a join mostly matters where two pieces meet at a right angle, if you glue two pieces of wood flat, there's no need to tape that join. (The only other use of tape/glass is on high abrasion locations - like on the DS our coamings have exposed wood where the top edge will get nicks etc. That would be a good place for a bit of glass sheath.).

When you laminate with strips of glass whether tape or strips you've cut from cloth, the way I usually do it is to brush a bit of epoxy onto the surface, put the cloth on, and then lightly brush the top side. After that, I use a spreader to squeeze out excess resin (and force any air out - there should be nothing that looks "white"). There are other techniques, like wetting out strips of fiberglass on a plastic sheet / surface and then transferring them wet.

Any of that make sense?

Speaking of sense. I'm not making sense of your pictures. You've lost me as to where these particular pieces go and in which orientation. They seem a bit unique to your boat model in their shapes.

Sealing wood requires full coating of ALL 6 sides (and the inside of any holes).
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby tomodda » Fri Nov 06, 2020 8:40 am

marcusg wrote:Ah angle grinder, good idea. I've been learning to use my cordless one, very cautiously, to sand .


I LOOOOOOVE my angle grinder! Get a flap disk and go to town! Protective Gloves and safety glasses too, of course. And respirator, depending what you're grinding. Great tool, but be safe!
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby marcusg » Sat Nov 07, 2020 12:24 am

Experimented with small strips of my three types of fiberglass cloth on the coaming top: the aforementioned poorly-performing 2" glass tape, some 4 oz cloth, and some heavier 6 oz cloth. The 4 oz absorbed the epoxy and blended in great, almost invisible. The 6 oz wasn't far behind, and is probably overkill for the edge of a coaming. The tape, however, was crap. Poor absorption, plus the edges totally don't absorb at all. Amazon has so many random fiberglass tapes, and I don't know if I wanna wait for S3 to ship from the Pacific Northwest, so I might just order some more 4 oz and cut my own strips for projects that need glass tape.

Greenlake, here's a better picture of one of the two-piece coamings:

coaming shape (Small).jpg
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The inside piece - the actual coaming - is screwed to the back piece. The back piece sits atop the side deck (and is screwed into it from below.) Both pieces are cut so they overlap the aft deck. The tan line between the two pieces is the wood filler I replaced the was, for some reason, filling that gap. That same gap goes around the whole joint between the two pieces, but is only wide enough to wood putty on top, and in other places is just a crack (hence why I just epoxied it in other places.) Make more sense?

Today I went to fix what I call the "access port" that leads into the internals of the boat, as the wooden frame that holds the cover for the port was needing to be re-epoxied, if not totally replaced (but I'd decided to not replace it.) Go figure, once I sand it down and get it ready for the juice, I notice more of it is falling apart and thing ah crap do I have to replace this too? But before I go and think about doing that, I just wanna understand what the heck this thing is even for.

Video with a really clear view of it: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nef_SI ... sp=sharing

hatchaccess (Small).jpg
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Re: Basic Painting Questions

Postby GreenLake » Sat Nov 07, 2020 1:13 am

Marcus, I can only speculate. I have seen posts by owners of DS2s (which also have that kind of raised floor in the cuddy) that cut openings like that to store a lead acid battery in a well secured location, low, and close to the center of the boat. If you plan on carrying a lead acid battery, that would not be a bad location for it (but might need a bit of a bracket glassed to the floor so you can strap it down). (*)

I don't know the last thing about SailStars, so I wouldn't know whether the foam that you see is factory original or whether that big hole was made to help put foam (or more foam) in that location. If any of the foam is original "crumbly" styrofoam, it will most likely be waterlogged by now. However, with an opening that big and a boat stored indoors, it may have been possible to keep that part dry enough to counteract the tendency for that kind of foam to hold onto water.

There's never supposed to be water down there. If it is, it's from a leak. Sometimes small leaks are "unavoidable": that is, they are so hard to trace that managing the situation is the best you can do. However, the big opening lets you check on and clean out the bilge. It's big enough to get a sponge down there and keep it really dry.

All this is valuable enough that I would recommend keeping this opening. The wooden frame looks dead simple to me. The delta in effort over figuring a way to cleanly glass over such a large gap appears minuscule.

PS: (*) before I switched to an EP Carry, I used a trolling motor, but that needed 2 lead acid batteries to barely give me enough range. Can't tell whether you could fit two of them in there? Now, the poster I mentioned had a regular outboard but used his battery as a "house" battery so he could run navigation lights and possibly things like a charger for his phone or GPS. Something, I'm sure, that comes in handy if you ever cruise some place. I tend to use LED lights and devices where I can change batteries, or devices/lights with their own solar chargers: I've sailed at night, but have not used my own boat for overnight trips, so my batteries were for propulsion only.
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