Pretty Fly for a White Guy

I finally got a couple of coats of finish paint on Alchemy this weekend. I am using Interlux Brightside (Blue-Glo White), which is a one-part polyurethane paint. It's not quite as tough as the two-part offerings available, but it is a rather robust finish which my dad and I have had good success with in the past. It gets quite hard after about 30 days.



The original plan was to spray the finish paint on the boat. My dad and I have found that your run-of-mill Wagner consumer-grade HVLP power sprayer is capable of doing a fine job. Naturally, the summer weather here in the Midwest had other plans. To be able to spray (somewhat) efficiently, you need essentially no wind if you are going to be spraying outside (which is a really good idea). I say "somewhat" because spray application is not nearly as efficient as brushing. And when the paint is at least $40 per quart (more for two-part finishes), that might be serious consideration.

Given this weekend's wind and forecast for thunderstorms, I opted to roll-and-tip the finish coats. This technique involves rolling the paint onto the boat in 2-foot-wide sections and lightly dragging a fine brush over the rolled paint to remove bubbles and prevent drips and sags from forming. I have found that the biggest "secret" is that you need to use quite a bit of thinner when you are rolling-and-tipping. Interlux recommends their #333 Brushing Liquid at a maximum of 10% by volume. This, of course, varies with wind, temperature, and humidity. Sorry, no silver bullet here.

By trial-and-error, I found that 5 "cap fulls" per 8oz of paint worked well. The draw back is that you don't get really awesome coverage. The paint goes a long ways: I have put on two coats (with one quart of paint) and one more to do. But there are still a few spots where the primer was thin (or completely sanded off) where I have a dark spot. The best news is that the ratio of thinner to paint that I am using has great leveling capability and very few brush strokes can be detected in the finish. See for yourself below:



I wet-sanded with 320 between coats. This did a good job of taking care of a few sags that I got when I was fine-tuning my method.

Anyway, I am very pleased with how the paint is going on. More wet-sanding tomorrow night probably with 400 grit, and a (hopefully!) final coat on Tuesday.

Stay tuned!

Jeff

P.S. For those of you that don't get the reference in the post title:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7-E1qTVJgE