Late Bungs, Prime Spreaders, and The Never Ending Bulwarks
More exciting boat work!
A good friend, Ed Zacko, has recently reminded me: the boat prep is in many ways more romantic than the big trip itself… enjoy every moment of it, realize you ARE on the journey right now. And remember “cruising is nothing more than working on your boat in exotic places”.
I do feel like I am on the voyage already, and I am loving every moment of it (in case you couldn’t tell)!
But, the bulwarks drag on and on. I think I need to hire someone to help me finish this up. I am leaving in the middle of April to take Dad to NH in order to get him ready for his move into an assisted living home there. I will be gone for a few weeks… a few prime boat work weeks. I have to be launched by June 1, because there are other boats behind mine that need to launch before their owners arrive “On Island” for the summer season. The rush is on, and I feel some pressure.
One thing you don’t want to do, is forget to attach your grab handle to your main sliding hatch before you varnish it. My initial intent was to lay a few coats, on each part, then attach the handle, and continue varnishing the complete unit… oh well… I forgot! So now, I’ll spot varnish the bungs, and try to find time to lay one complete coat over the assembly for good measure. This will give me a chance to block sand the hatch one more time and try to give her that super smooth look.
My mast is one project I will tackle once the boat is launched, and the pressure is off, but I do have the spreaders here at the house, and have sprayed them with 2 coats of Zinc Chromate Primer. I just laid down some Sterling 94-U1000 primer today, and will top coat with some Awlgrip Federal Yellow (A quart came with Elizabeth) but will use Sterling catalyst – I’m pretty sure they will be compatible.
The bulwarks themselves are alot of work. I cut off the foot of the cover frames in order to gain access to the bulwarks. One more thing to remove for this job is the Jackline padeye on the deck/covering board forward. I’m not sure if I will remove the chainplates to get paint in behind them… I’d like to, but I’m getting nervous about time. Anyone want to come over and help?
I know AwlGrip catalyst is compatible with Sterling color. So I suspect the reverse is true!
Noticed the PreVal disposable spray bottles. Nice for spraying LPU on small parts instead of brushing.
Yeah – the mini spray bottle, I thought that was cool, especially for my mast track – then remembered I bought the brushing thinner. Can you use the brushing thinner for spraying, if all you want to do is get some paint in there, not worrying about how it looks? Or will the flow just be all wrong and it will sag/run and not stick… I wonder.
You might lose some gloss with the brushing thinner, it could work. Spray thinner is intended to flash faster than brush thinner. Blushing is caused when thinning solvents don’t evaporate before the coating has cured.
Then again, the guy who sprayed our sloop uses gun cleaning solvent for spray thinner! He swears by it. Not sure *I* would try that, lol.
Ben,
A good brush works just fine on the Forespar track. It’s good for controlling the amount of paint, so sags aren’t much of a problem.
If you start at the masthead end, by the time you get to the bottom 15 feet, which is all anyone can see up close, you’ll be doing perfect painting! My big problem was I hated to sand the primer coats down to complete smoothness, and loose all that good protection!
Dan
Dan good to know a brush will work fine in the track… that’ll be a fun project. I’m not painting the whole mast, just the track and a few other spots. Gunna look weird I know, but not getting into that big project this year.