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Bottom paint removal

dcoyle

Member III
Let Me tell you about a beautiful thing. My 1981 E33 had about 1/8 inch buildup of bottom paint, it never had been stripped. I have picked away at cleaning it for the 3 years it`s been mine, probably had 30 hours into it. Tried razor knife, sharpened paint scapper, pressure washer, grinder, all that stuff was way to much work, then tried chemical stripper 5f5, ugh never again, bad for my body and for the environment!!! However the bottom is now clean, down to gel coat, took about 25 hours to do the entire 333feet, and about 1/3 of that time was setup. The product you want to use to remove the bottom paint is called SOY STRIP, it`s water soluble, biodegradable, non toxic and easy to use, however, it`s not cheap, less than sandblasting though. I bought mine at West Marine they wanted $111./gallon, I got it for $90/gal with their price match, you can get it online for about $70 plus shipping from Oregon. My boat took 2 gallons. The distributer, a fellow named John Coleman was extremely helpful with questions, his number is online too. I bought a 4inch throw away brush to apply it with, covered the ground under the boat with plastic, applied the stripper, covered it with 2mill plastic, let it cook for 36 hours with outside temp around 50-55 and rainy. With all the rain I had to tent the boat with blue tarps so I could work, thats why the setup took so long. I tried a painters 5 tool to scrap with and ended up using a razor knife to remove the old paint. It wasn`t that bad of job, didnt`t need a respirator
and final cleanup was easy, I rolled up the ground plastic with all the old paint inside and disposed of it per my local requirement.i
 

NateHanson

Sustaining Member
I finally got around to renting a sand blaster and walnut blasting my hull. That's a really quick job. Dirty as hell, but quick, easy, and cheap. Total cost was about $250. Total time was about 5 hours with about 2 hours cleanup.

I'd definitely recommend this technique if your boat is somewhere that will allow this. I got the walnut media from an online company called "Consolidated Stripping" and it was about $28/50# bag, including freight.

Nate
 
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rwthomas1

Sustaining Partner
Would the yard allow sanding IF you had a dust-free system? I use a Fein vacuum hooked up to a Metabo 6" electric DA. With 40 grit disks it cuts right through old ablative with ease. A little tougher with hard bottom paint but better than any scaper I have tried. The combination of Fein vac and Metabo sander is completely dust free. You can work without a mask. This setup will cost about $400-$450 but then you own it. RT
 

wurzner

Member III
Richard,

Thanks for questioning whether it was a leaf spring or coil. Having only had cars with Macpherson systems (and perhaps the two beers in the hot tub), I was sitting here trying to figure out what Guy was getting at. I've come to really value his posts and didn't go beyond it as I contemplated how to get a coil spring to help in stripping. You saved me a good nights sleep because I would have been up a while thinking that one through.

Guy, thanks for as usual...a creative way to do something. Exported from my home state as well.

shaun
 

CaptnNero

Accelerant
I looked at SoyStrip, but when I talked to the manufacturer he said not to use it on barrier coat.

PeelAway #1 does not attack barrier coat or gel coat. It is a caustic which chemically can't hurt epoxy. We stripped about three layers antifouling off of our 34 foot boat in January using the PeelAway #1 product. A chemist friend had talked to the manufacturer and said #1 is essentially the same as the marine versions. #1 is only about 25 bucks per 1.25 gallon bucket at Home Depot, about 40% of the marine version price. It look about 7 buckets applied in several applications for our E34. It is caustic so you need to use gloves and not leave it on any exposed skin. It has a paste consistency like spackling compound so we applied it with spackling blades. If we did it all at once it would have taken about four days for the two of us.

You spread it on and cover it with a special fibrous sheet with film on the top side. About 12-18 hours later you can quickly peel it off with a spackling blade or putty knife. If you wait too long, it dries out and have to apply more over the old stuff. It will remove all the layers except it leaves a residue from the last layer of paint. The instructions say to wash the residue with low pressure water. That works but the yard doesn't want the paint residue to hit the ground. We covered the ground with tarps and used 5 gallon buckets of rinse water to wipe the residue with big sponges. This left us with 70 gallons of very very blue water which I'm letting evaporate in open containers under the deck.

If you don't wipe the residue off promptly before it starts to dry, it has to be scrubbed. The trick is to remove a few square feet of the fibrous paper at a time. Each fibrous sheet is about 10 square feet, so put it on in one piece and take it off in about 3-4 pieces or you will have to scrub or re-apply.

After all of the sheets are removed and sponge rinsed, I used a water hose as a final rinse, but the paint residue from this was insignificant compared to when they power wash an ablative bottom.

Before applying the new anitfouling, I wiped it down well with vinegar to deactivate any PeelAway residue and rinsed again. The barrier coat had to be roughed up with 80 grit also.

My main motivation was to get a closer look at the hull to check for blistering. I think it was stripped before since there were only three layers of paint.

-- neal
 

Glyn Judson

Moderator
Moderator
All, In about 90 minutes I'm hauling my boat to begin a shopping list of deferred maintenance inclusing 25+ years of bottom paint. I'll be using a soy based stripper from Franmar in Illinois, sorry no time to Google their web site). It's neat in that the stripper itself is nature friendly, there's n need for gloves although they recommnet goggles. Essentially it'll go on this afternoon when the air temp is over 65 degrees by using a 4" brush (not a roller) that when brushed one way only should lay down 1/8" of this gel. It gets applied in increments of ten square feet at a time and then covered with plastic wrap like you get from U-Haul, then on to the next ten feet and so on. the next move comes tomorrow morning when the wrap is removed and either a paint scaper or power washer (3,000 to 4,000 PSI) is used to remove everything doen to the gel coat in one application. My boat requires 3 1/2 gallons of this soy strip but it was more cost effective to but a 5-gallon tub of it so I'll have plenty for touch up if necessary. I'll report back tomorrow evening. Wish me luck, Glyn
 

NateHanson

Sustaining Member
I'll be interested to hear how this goes. I've yet to hear of a chemical stripper that works as well as the back of the can implies, but the wonder of chemistry should come through here eventually!
Does your yard allow you to wash off the paint after the stripper has cooked?
 

CaptnNero

Accelerant
how about that soy stripper verdict

Glyn, any news on that soy stripper project ? Is it tomorrow evening yet ? :)

FWIW, belated good luck !

Glyn Judson said:
All, In about 90 minutes I'm hauling my boat to begin a shopping list of deferred maintenance inclusing 25+ years of bottom paint. I'll be using a soy based stripper from Franmar in Illinois, sorry no time to Google their web site). It's neat in that the stripper itself is nature friendly, there's n need for gloves although they recommnet goggles. Essentially it'll go on this afternoon when the air temp is over 65 degrees by using a 4" brush (not a roller) that when brushed one way only should lay down 1/8" of this gel. It gets applied in increments of ten square feet at a time and then covered with plastic wrap like you get from U-Haul, then on to the next ten feet and so on. the next move comes tomorrow morning when the wrap is removed and either a paint scaper or power washer (3,000 to 4,000 PSI) is used to remove everything doen to the gel coat in one application. My boat requires 3 1/2 gallons of this soy strip but it was more cost effective to but a 5-gallon tub of it so I'll have plenty for touch up if necessary. I'll report back tomorrow evening. Wish me luck, Glyn
 
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dcoyle

Member III
I did my 81 E33 last fall had many many layers. I used soy strip, purchased at West Marine they price matched to $90. per gallon. It took 2.5 gallons. The stuff is awesome, I tried a bunch of other stuff but this worked the easiest and is cleaned up with water, is biodegradable and very easy on your body. I used a 1inch razor knife to scrape with.
 

mann

Inactive Member
i paid a friend of mine $150 (and some beers) to sand the bottom of mine. he is about 70% done now.
 

timday5

Member II
Air Sander and Water

... where I can't use my Hutchinson linear air sander and water.

Guy
:)

Guy,

When you use the sander, what grit and sander settings (spm, orbital vs linear, etc) and are there any precautions you take with regard to the gelcoat, etc?

Tim
 

Guy Stevens

Moderator
Moderator
Some answers

Orbital, Depending on the paint thickness I select different grits, Generally I don't have to get too course, last boat I think was 100-150 if I recall correctly.

Guy
:)
 

Randy Rutledge

Sustaining Member
I am working at my own garage so the residue is not a big problem. My boat has two coats of ablative blue over grey with a texture like a stippled ceiling and very thick (very ugly and slow) I am using a an orbital air sander and a window fan blowing across the work to help get the sanding dust away from me. I have used 60 grit for starters and then 80 for the last bit of paint. When you see the gelcoat color you want to move on. The surface needs to be sanded to give a good mechanical bond to the barrier coat or bottom paint.

If you have a round spot that the gelcoat shows early in the sanding this is a blister starting to surface and you should deal with it as though it were a full blister bubbled out.

Work slow until you get the hang of it and the go for it.
 
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