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Today I worked for a few hours rebuilding the cabin door casing on my 31 Express, "De Nada". Soon both the cabin door and the head door will close and latch properly for the first time since I owned the boat.

Eventually I intend to paint the interior of the cabin. The bulkheads and the "head door" that I have replaced are laminated with formica. The cabin door casing is not laminated.

I can laminate it with formica if nessessary but I am wondering if this will work.
If I satruate the wood with West Systems Epoxy then sand it smooth then prime and paint it with a good 2 part urethane do you think I will get a good durable finish that will last.

Harry Babb

Harry Babb wrote: If I satruate the wood with West Systems Epoxy then sand it smooth then prime and paint it with a good 2 part urethane do you think I will get a good durable finish that will last.

Harry Babb

I've done that before with good results! I used three seperate applicatons of west system (sanding smooth after each application dried). It had a mirror finish that held up just fine for the following 4 years that I owned that boat. In my opinion, it would look alot nicer than the formica.
Dave

I've painted over the marine ply I used to rebuild my dinette. To get the marine ply sealed and completely fair, I used straight West, sanded, then a couple of coats of West with fairing filler applied with 6" or 10" drywall knives, sanded, primed, and then hit the spots where the grain still showed through the prime, then primed and painted. Yep, it can be done, but I found it was a "fair" amount of work (yuk, yuk). Looks nice.

John F.

I had sanded and sprayed the whole interior of the boat .,.,awlgrip ,,the older one .,.,all non fiberglass surfaces were awlgripped and all fiberglass surfaces were gelcoated .,.,.,yes the paint will adhere and you will get a nice finish but follow directions and be sure to follow tack coat directions and let it set and then finish coat .,.,the tendency is to put to nuch on and then it sags and then your sanding and reshooting so avoid that pitfall.,.,laquer thinner is good to final wipe .,.,let it flash off and shoot
its a lot of masking etc but it is worth the finished product,.,.,its been 6 or 7 years and the finish is still as good as the day i shot it..................

Thanks for the reply,
I was in hopes that I could get reassurance from the faithful that I could get a good finish using West Systems on the wood followed by primer and the urethane top coat.
Thanks again for sharing your experience with me........I will let you know how it turns out. I am still in the construction stages and it may be later in spring or even summer before I actually try my hand at shooting Awlgrip or Emron.

Does Awlgrip and Emron give pretty much the same results.......durability, luster, stain resistance, cleanability etc.

Harry Babb

Harry,

You'd only need to lay an epoxy base over any wood, especially bare wood. Even that might not be necessary if you lay down at least two good coats of epoxy primer, (Awlgrip 545).

Br,

Patrick