stripping bottom paint

[cfretz]

I'm loaning my garage to a friend to do some work on his boat. The plan is to lift the boat off the trailer sat morning and strip the bottom, 2-3 layers of old brown paint. He got the west marine peel away safety strip with the paper. Whats our working time with this stuff? The sales person says 8hrs which doesnt fit with the schedule. We were looking to apply on saturday and remove sunday morning so thats 18 hours. My other option is to apply and remove on saturday but thats only about 6 hrs after we get prepped. We were planning on sanding off the leftovers on sunday.

The goal is to get him in and out in 2 weekends so this could really screw up the timeline.

Any pointers?

[dkall]

Just ran out. You need to do a couple of test patches to see what the best time is. I would after you put some stuff on and the paper on tape around the paper so it doesn't dry out from the edges in. Also be aware it isn't perfect. We still sand the bottom with 80 grit to prep for the barrier coat and paint.

[Figment]

Two or three layers of paint? Just sand it.

What's the motive behind stripping the bottom down to nothing?

[David VanDenburgh]

The method may be unorthodox on a boat, but out of frustration and tired shoulders I finally switched from a r/o sander with 40 grit to a paint scraper to remove a couple layers of ablative on our Cape Dory 36. Worked like a charm! I stripped 4x as much paint in half the time - not to mention less dust and mess. Just be sure to keep the scraper flat so that the edges don't gouge the gel coat. In my case, the boat had a barrier coat that kept me away from the gel coat.

[cfretz]

the boat is dry stored and raced. After stripping it will be wetsanded to 600 then polished.

The stripper should get most and keep the paint dust to a minimum

[kendall]

If you file the corners off the scraper it doesn't gouge or scratch as easily, scraping is a fast process and saves a lot of time with about anything. I always scrape instead of sand if the paint is agreeable, some isn't and needs grinding or heavy sanding.

another place scraping works better is with old weathered wood (teak especialy) in the case of teak, wipe it down with a wet rag then scrape it, it 'flattens' the wood out and you don't sand grooves or divots in the wood. re-wet as required, get it 90+% done, let it dry and finish scraping it dry

My most used scrapers for wood are old worn out jointer blades, resharpened, and ground on the blunt side gives 3 nice large scraping areas, and the ends for smaller spots, second is old plane blades treated the same way. Work very nice, and don't load up like sand paper, done right there's almost no need for sanding, most wood it's easy to get a nice gloss finish, scuff it with your final paper and varnish. depending on the paint, I normally use either regular paint scrapers, or the wood scrapers, or whatever 'fits' the contour.

For the jointer blades I made handles from scrap wood, split it with a table saw, and clamp it with screws & nuts flipping blade around as required for what I'm doing.

Ken.

[Jason K]

I sincerely hope it works well for you. However, I had a nightmare experience with the stuff and ended up throwing away a large amount in an absolute rage.

I tried it on the toerails of my boat when I started repainting in May. Although I even covered the application in saran wrap, it was, for me, a no go.

I have nothing good to say about the stuff. It made the work far more difficult and far more tedious as, after scraping and pressure washing the residue, I ended up crawling around the boat with a plastic bag and a small scraper getting every last bit of the junk off the boat. Then I ended up sanding the toerails with a small hand sander anyway.

Here's my thread on the product:
http://www.triton381.com/forum/viewtopi ... fety+strip

[dasein668]

My experience wasn't that bad. We used the regular stuff (not marine) used in home restoration work. It wasn't a cure-all, but we had good success slathering it on and covering with the supplied paper. We effectively removed probably 75 percent of the paint that way. Sanding was required for the balance.

[Jason K]

My experience wasn't that bad. We used the regular stuff (not marine) used in home restoration work

I don't really have a problem with stripper in general; there are, of course, appropriate applications. It's the West Marine Safety Strip that I have big issues with.

[dasein668]

Note that we used the stripper for bottom paint removal, not varnish or other.