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Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Rhodes Kingfisher - Painting the hull

When I got this boat, remember that I paid exactly $0.00 for it.  The only stipulation was that I had to take the rotted trailer too, which I ended up cutting up and giving to a guy for scrap.  I was able to recycle a few rollers from it though (more on that later).

The hull, while in good shape structurally, was in pretty bad shape gelcoat-wise.  There were chips and repairs all over it.  It would float, but it was not pretty.  

Last year, I sanded the bottom of my Catalina 22 "Blue Skies", and painted it with much success.  I followed suit with this boat.  I sanded the hull down with a random orbit sander with 80-grit disks.  I also filled in the holes with West System epoxy and filler and sanded that smooth too.

Then I followed with 4 coats of Interlux 2000, alternating gray and white.  However, fearing that the gray would show, I did two coats of gray, followed by two coats of white.  This is a two-part paint and was applied with a roller.  

I did sand a little (wet sanded with 220 grit) between the coats to remove any imperfections and drips.  
I'm happy with the results.  There is a little orange peel in it.  If I keep this boat (which I do plan on doing), I will probably wet-sand above the water line and paint it with an Interlux top-side paint, and I'll probably hit the bottom with Interlux VC17M, which I painted my Catalina bottom with.

I'll probably do the bottom paint when I refinish the keel on the Catalina, and if I have any left over after the keel and the Kingfisher, I'll hit the bottom of my Dyer Dhow midget dinghy too.






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