Toxic Smurf

[Marshall Mahoney]

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welc ... lY&notag=1[/img]

I thought you guys said soda blasting was easy. Click on the link. 2 pictures are soda blasting in action. 1 picture is a message to whoever talked me into it. Click "View Pictures" then "Slide Show."

[In Memory of Vicroy]

Marshall - sure looks like you are doing that in your carport.....but I don't do divorce cases anymore........sure like the headrest tho, the coonass way.

UV

[JohnD]

Thanks, now that's one job I'll never consider doing myself!!!

As a matter of fact I don't paint bottoms anymore...

Good luck getting her finished up.

John

[Harv]

Marshall,

5 years ago, when I got Windstar, she must have had every coat of bottom paint ever applied.
The method I used was Interlux Pintoff, which is a gel that is brushed on, left to sit for several minutes and then scraped off.
After the Pintoff has removed as much bottom paint as it could, I then sanded the rest down to bare glass. This process
took me roughly 8-10 days (from sunrise to well after dark) to complete.

Soda or any other type of bottom blasting is far easier than the approach I took, however, my approach is the least expensive.
The only easier way to do the bottom is to have someone else do it, which is my appraoch the next time it has to be done.
However, no matter which way you clean the bottom, the results are well worth it.

[randall]

i did what i would call a light blast with fine sand.....low pressure and some distance........took off 80-90 percent of the paint...left the gel coat alone.......figured if it got to be 35 years old with no problems...why mess with it now

[DRIFTER31]

Marshall looks like you blasted a little skin off forehead!!!!How long did it take and was it worth it compared to chemical stripers? I need to do my 21years of bottom paint on the 31Tiara. Troy Danos

[Carl]

It is easy, but you forgot the MOST important step, have someone else do it.

Did mine several years back, chemical was TOO slow for me so I did a light grind and lots of sanding. Yeah...defintely need to follow step one next time. Although now I use the ablative and not much of it, really keeps buildup down and I have little growth.

[Capt. DQ]

Marshall,
I Soda blasted mine with a pressure washer with a 5 G.P.M. water flow with a separate vat with the soda blast in it, I didn't look like you after blasting, just look like I was playing in the water hose from getting wet.
But good luck, it was looking good when I came by going to Faux Pas down in Venice. Was talking to Mr. Skeets down in Venice and he said; his son works with you at the plant.

DQ

[AndreF]

Suzie's still pissed, I bet.

[Jack]

Neatest job I ever saw was by a guy in my marina several years ago. He used oven cleaner. Bought cases of the cheapest stuff he could find. Very slow process, since he had to do small sections, multiple times to get down to glass. He is retired and did the work over a winter. But in the end, he had stripped about 15 years of paint off the bottom of a blubliner and the bottom looked like brand new.

[Rawleigh]

Oven cleaner is lye based and will emove paint. I have used it in heavy equipment.

[Harv]

Neatest job I ever saw was by a guy in my marina several years ago. He used oven cleaner. Bought cases of the cheapest stuff he could find. Very slow process, since he had to do small sections, multiple times to get down to glass. He is retired and did the work over a winter. But in the end, he had stripped about 15 years of paint off the bottom of a blubliner and the bottom looked like brand new.

That's probably cheaper than the way I did it. However, the process is almost the same as with the Pintoff. I used Easy Off to remove the old name on the transom. The only thing to remember with Easy Off is to rinse with lots of water. Besides eating paint it will also eat gelcoat.

[Marshall Mahoney]

Did I mention that I killed the $&@* out of my neighbor's lawn?

I looked at fine sand but to much dust for neighborhood blasting. The whole process took about 6 hours. The trick was getting finished before 5:00 when people came home from work -- it was not a discrete process. (Don't you wish you had neighbors like me)? I tried several paint removers but did not have much luck (the gentle ones were a joke and the strong one even softened the gelcoat so be carefull if you go this route). I would still reccomend blasting vs sanding or stripping -- due to minimal time/effort (that 5# sander gets REALLY heavy). Harv -- I'll be happy if my hull comes out a fraction as nice as yours!

[Harv]

Marshall,

for the final touches, I used a handheld Ryobi orbital sander. Very light, with a 5 1/2 inch disk. Used 80 grit for the leftover paint and 120 grit to smooth it all out. Actually, I would have been fine with just the 120. Ironically, that was the last year the yard (by law?) allowed me to paint my own bottom, and it has never come out as good since. Plus the fact that the yard seems to need 1 1/2 times the amount of paint that I used.