A Little Do-It-Yourself Boat Painting

 "Hard hard can it be?"  After hours of YouTube videos, I thought I had this whole boat painting thing figured out.  

My Jones Brothers skiff was looking a bit faded.  The 20+ year old cream/off-white gel coat was in need of some major cutting and buffing, and there were some cracks and gouges and an errant screw hole for a swim ladder only filled in with silicon sealant.  Just the conditioning and buffing would be a major undertaking.  On top of that my ablative bottom paint, that wears off on its own, that I'd done myself, was starting to look rough.  

Then, I'd stumbled across a picture on Facebook, of someone who'd painted the same hull as mine with the Alexseal brand topside paint with their "roll" additive, which smooths out the paint after rolling it onto a surface.  I was mesmerized with the pictures online, drawn to doom scrolling online forums like Hull Truth, and others.  It looked too good to be true.  As anyone who's done any kind of painting, on a boat or not, you'll know that normally "rolling" paint leaves texture on the surface, unlike spraying.  Even the technique, rolling and tipping, is far from perfect.  Otherwise, there's spraying paint with a paint gun, something I didn't feel like buying and something I've never dabbled with.  This stuff looked like it had been sprayed.  It was smooth and shined.  But it'd been rolled.  Anyone could do that, right?

I hadn't painted all that much before, some interior walls here and there, but I had done enough to know that preparation's everything.  For a boat hull, that means sanding, lots of it, and filling cracks and gouges and low areas with epoxy fairing compound, and thoroughly cleaning the surface of contaminants like oils and other chemicals.    

The YouTube channel, Boatworks Today, helped guide me through.  You sand.  You use "guide coat," a fine powder that shows you where low spots are.  You clean.  You fair the hull.  You sand again.  Repeat as needed.  Repeat again. Maybe again.  You've got to get the right rollers.  Tape your rollers to get the lint off.  Lots to learn.  

Then, the other challenge---math.  Proportions.  Fractions.  The mixing of the paint.  You've got to follow the instructions well.  This stuff, a multi part paint, requires mixing the paint with a reducer that thins out the mixture, a converter that is like a catalyst and hardens the mixture, and a roll additive, the "miracle juice," in extremely precise measurements.  Too, the temperature affects this whole thing.  Too hot the paint will "kick" or cure much more quickly, maybe too quickly as you're trying to roll it on.  Too cold, and the stuff won't cure when you want it to.

Then comes actually getting this stuff on the boat.  The technique is tricky, but something anyone can get after a few attempts.  You've got to roll the stuff on very thin, and very light with almost no pressure.  And you can't go back over where you've painted more than a time or two... otherwise you'll still get some of that "orange-peel" rolling texture you're trying to avoid.  

In the end though, it'll be worth it.  A reflective shine that makes any boat look new, especially after slapping some new decals on there.  You've learned a new skill, and saved up to thousands of dollars in someone else's labor.  If you've got an older rig, give it a shot, you might be surprised with yourself and the results.