repairing/painting hull

[lamarstrehlow74]

I’m doing the normal winter repairs on my 1984 built timber sabre. The hull has had quite a few scratches and scrapings on it requiring sanding back to bare timber on some patches. The hull has a top coat of oil based enamel house paint overlying its original topcoat colour and than a grey colour of what I assume to be primer. I’m assuming these are all oil based.
Should I put primer on the bare patches and paint over enamel house paint ?
Or should I treat the bare patches with resin and perhaps fibreglass patches to strengthen these areas ?
Any ideas or information I can access eg websites, books etc wouldbe great
Thanks
Helen

[dulciechristense]

I have always had good results with household enamel. Preparation is relatively simple – grind out locations where cracks are visible and apply patches of fibreglass in epoxy resin, sand, fill, undercoat if needed and apply a couple of coats of finish enamel.

Whatever you do, don’t go for a two-pot finish on an old boat – the preparation work is extensive and the boat is likely to flex and crack your new brittle finish within weeks of launching.

I have a very old Sabre on which that the previous owner spent a huge amount of time putting on a beautiful two-pot paint job. The boat now has numerous small cracks at stress points (at the ends of floor battens, etc.) on this otherwise beautiful finish.

I intend to put glass/epoxy patches on these cracks and paint the boat with a nice flexible enamel like International “Brightside”, which isn’t much dearer than common garden household enamel or single pack polyurethane.

[Paul Matthews]

Hi Mike,
Could you tell me – when you say enamel – do you mean oil-based or water based?
Thanks, Sue

[dulciechristense]

Oil based (alkyd – your standard household enamel) or one-pot polyester (such as International “Brightside”)

Can’t say I’ve ever seen or heard of a decent waterbased gloss that would give me the finish I would want.

MRS

[lamarstrehlow74]

Helen
My experience has been -stick with single pack paint.
If you are tempted to use two pack materials be aware they cannot be applied over single pack paints.The thinners in 2pack is so volatile it dissolves any single pack paint underneath and the resulting mess brings tears.

I’ve had great success with paving paint which has good adhesion and withstands knocks a little better than house enamels.

If your bare patches have been caused by stresses eg end of internal stringer it would be wise to add patches of glass as Mike suggested.
Use a small grinder or sanding disc to dig out the ply approx 1mm deep to allow somewhere for the glass to go. Then fill ,sand and paint over for an invisible finish.
If the patches are from normal dings and bumps then the glass treatment isn’t necessary.
Beware with the filler. Once you have used epoxy resin you need to use epoxy based fillers. Polyester fillers like car body filler wont set very well over epoxy.

Best luck
Matt.
1697
Zahir

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