Decking Replacement - Boat Rebuild

[Mortigan]

[Jolly II]

From one DIY guy to another.... Awesome!

[carpedium]

Got the dual bilge pumps in this AM

[carpedium]

Bondo to the counter-sunk rivets and some aluminum treadplate for under the consoles.

This thing works great!

Got the sides of the gunwales primed, and another coat of finish paint on the consoles

Primed the gunwale sides with a few more coats of this stuff:

Final finish coat on everything, except the motorwell, which will get sprayed when the motor comes off.

I got the bedliner spray in the mail yesterday, and will apply that as soon as it gets warm enough. I am asking a lot of the paint to cure in 34 deg weather, but its almost set up from last night.

I want to spray the tops of the gunwales with the spray in bedliner for extra protection, non-skid, and to cover up any blemishes that are there. Does anyone see a downside to doing this?

[jimski2]

A new product

http://www.safe-floor.com

http://www.safe-floor.com/Marine.htm

[carpedium]

That's pretty interesting. It looks to be the same base/makeup as the product I have - but its applied in a different way.

Our granulated rubber is normally sized at 1 - 3mm on regular surfaces. We also have a .5 - 1.5mm (finer, smoother) size available for special installations. Rubber granules are bonded to the surface with either a rubber based urethane epoxy or a polyurethane binder depending on what type of application it will be used for.

I like the finish.

I'm set to spray in my floor probably tomorrow. Exciting.

[Mortigan]

I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product.

[lineman49]

You are doing a hell of a job, looking good!!!

[ReelPower]

Fine work! Love to see the final result.

[carpedium]

As promised, some pics of the 80% cured "bedliner":

Prep for this took 3-4 days, including taping, 3m 5600ing around the edges, sanding - scraping, etc.

Doing a good job on the prep & taping off areas that need to be protected is critical. There are areas around the edges that I could have done a better job "smoothing out" the 5600 - and it kind of shows. Im not dissatisfied, just something I would have spend more time on.

[carpedium]

The texture is AMAZING. It is completely non-skid, but also is not too rough at all on the feet. The rubber flexes with your foot movement, so it doesn't scrape at all. There won't be a need to put carpet down to tame this at all. I used rubber "dust", instead of the more aggressive "crumb".

I did get the consoles in, I will post more pics of this later.

[potsie225]

Matt you are the man, the boat looks awesome. I will be out of town for a week, but will give you a call to look at the new boat. Noah had nothing on you LOL Doug

[carpedium]

Got the consoles 100% riveted down. They are very solid.

I hope to get the outside of the boat sanded (scuffed), primed, and painted this week so that it can harden for a week or so then i'll be able to splash!

[carpedium]

Matt you are the man, the boat looks awesome. I will be out of town for a week, but will give you a call to look at the new boat. Noah had nothing on you LOL Doug

Thanks, Doug. Yeah, give me a call anytime!

[ioiosoiwork]

HELLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! PEOPLE LIVING VICARIOUSLY THROUGH YOU HERE ! UPDATES !

[carpedium]

hahaha alright alright

Last night I was able to get half of the hull prepped, with 3 coats of primer (4 if you count the ZC on bare AL spots) I sanded really well between each coat.

The main prep was the most difficult - The goofoff worked alright, the WD-40 didn't seem to work well with this type of adhesive. I ended up just wiping down with a lot of acetone and that did the trick. After that, I brass brushed and of the chipping or irregular spots (not many) and gave the whole thing a good scuff with 150, then 220, then 500 grit. In between primer coats I sanded with the "between coats" pad pictured above - I love that thing. My can of ZC is kind of spitting and sputtering now at the tip, so there was some nubs to sand down.

In between coats I also got the old livewell drain plugged up. I ended up going with 1/8" aluminum plate and epoxy to seal it. I took a 3.5" by 7" piece of aluminum, bent it so that it was at an angle, then drilled it out using 3/4" centers on the rivets all around the plate. I drilled 3/16 holes first, and riveted the plate to the hull using two of those, one in each corner. After that I drilled the rest of the holes through the hull and plate using a 1/4" bit - so everything is perfectly aligned. All that was left to do was drill out the 3/16 holes, and everything was golden. After everything was sanded, cleaned, and acetoned I slathered epoxy on the plate and stuck it on with the rest of my 1/4" closed end rivets. Popped it on and it is not going anywhere. Based on the manufacturers data on the rivets, the strength of the patch exceeds the shear strength of the aluminum. I made the patch twice as long so that I could bend the bottom half up to work as a transducer mount. This way I wont have to put more holes in the transom when I mount the transducer. Last night I also plugged all of the old holes with rivets and epoxy. I also drilled two core samples in the transom to be sure I was not wasting my time here. The shavings were light in color with a red hue. The wood around the motor mount holes also looks good. I will get some pictures of that to post soon.

I got up early this morning to finish prepping the Transom, sanded, acetoned, and put the first coat of primer on (ZC). Tonight I plan to get the other half of the hull prepped and to the same point as the first half. Then tomorrow I can clean out the shed, experiment with the color, and start spraying my main coats.

Pics of the progress:

[carpedium]

I got the power TnT parts in the mail from Canada today... Only to find that the kit contained this:

Instead of this:

I called the place I bought the kit from (Hastings Marine) and they are working on seing if they have another one that they can ship out. I hope they do!

I also got the rest of the transom prepped and primed on my lunch break, and was able to move the boat back on the trailer using brute strength.

[carpedium]

Last night I got the other side de-scuzzed, sanded, acetoned, sanded, and primed (2 coats).

This morning I got the whole boat sanded again, tacked, then primed for the final coat.

ehh, it looks the same as the last pic, but I uploaded it so its gonna get posted!

[ioiosoiwork]

THANK YOU !, Matt looks GREAT !!!! I'm sure I'll look back on ALL this great info when/if I do mine, gonna paint her to match the hauler ?

[carpedium]

Thanks! Its definitely worth doing, makes it nice to set the boat up the way you want it. When you are done its better than when it was new from the factory and something you can take pride in. My main motivation in doing it was to make the safety upgrades, and be able to take people out on it without feeling like a pirate.

Updates:

I wanted a dark dark gray metallic color - but you can't buy that off the shelf (except rattle-can $$$). Time to experiment. My plan was to mix paint in black and aluminum to create the color I desired.

Yesterday I went out and gave painting shot on my lunch break. I will post what I used for my mix ratios if there is any interest. At first I didn't think it was going to work because the mix was quite pretty non-homogeneous, e.g. lots of swirls and not mixing well. After I while I gave up and just shook the can. Shaking produced about 95% uniformity. 5% was still swirly. I thinned the whole mix at 15% with acetone, and also used hardener at the recommended ratio.

The first thing I sprayed was a scrap piece of AL that I had previously primed. I set the gun very lean, and had to fuss with it to get to the point where it was applying a realistic amount of paint to create a sheen. I was very surprised to see that it was going on very uniformly - and looked great with a very dark metallic gray that I was looking for.

Sitting out in the sun the scrap piece didn't take long to tack up. I had a more material in the gun so I decided to try a small swatch on the boat, since the primer had already dried and I had sanded a small area. It sprayed on the boat beautifully. I quickly sanded the transom, and sprayed that with what was left in my gun. So far so good. I will report on how it dries, but by the time i was done the AL piece was already losing its tack.

As always - some pics:

[carpedium]

Last night got cut short by severe thunderstorms leading to hours of power loss. Bummer. I did manage to pre-mix the paint for this morning's coat (sans hardner). I also got the dash panels installed - I think they look great. Forgot to take pics, but will post some later.

This morning I wet-sanded, dried, tacked, and put the second coat on. I love the color, and the second coat went on way easier than the first.

Pics:

What looks like a run in this pic is actually epoxy from when I put the rivet in. I put it on too thick and did not sand it though. Can't really tell unless you're looking at this angle though. dammit.

The paint is really deceiving. From 5+ feet away it looks really dark unless the sun is hitting it directly. Then close up it looks really light. Really neat!

[carpedium]

Pic of the final coat of paint - turned out great. Sorry for the dirty camera lens.

Got half of the windshield on, and the boards mounted:

Got the splashwell cleaned out, re-sealed, and sprayed with bedliner. I ended up re-fastening the transom cap and sealing up as well.

As promised, pic of my transom wood shavings:

Got the new splashwell boot grommet thing installed. I like this one because it synches with a wire tie - so if you have to add a wire just clip the tie, slip it through, and install a new tie.

[carpedium]

Got the bow seat cut out and sprayed with bedliner:

I will share with everyone my one mistake on the paint job. I caught the runs.

Oh well. I didn't check my gun settings on my first spray on the final coat - very important!

Well there is another mistake... I didn't tape off the bow well enough, and I have some overspray on the bare aluminum under the bow eye. I am hoping some mineral spirits or acetone takes care of this.

[BAZOOKAJOE]

Looking good!

[ Post made via iPhone ]

[ioiosoiwork]

GREAT JOB & COLOR !! pin-striping ? , LOOKS GREAT MATT!!!!! THANKS for sharing !