Hull painted

Here are some photos of the final paint job on the hull. When the weather presents a good day for outside spraying I will put some automotive clear coat on the hull to protect the paint. Being water based paint, it is pretty fragile at the moment. After the clear coat goes on I can then paint the cockpit and the deck. I still have much to do on the boat, but very happy to have some paint on her. I need to drill a hole for the rudder tube, drill a hole for the keel bolt as well as drilling holes for various fairleads and a deck block. I have to make my rigs and sails and then work on connecting the lead bulb to the keel. The keel and the rudder also need to be painted. WOW! I have a lot of work remaining on the boat, but so far it has been a very satisfying project. I need to thank Al, Hew and Dave for all of their help, advice, assistance so far in this project. THANKS GUYS!

Oh yeah, my choice of color? "Porn Star Pink" - the the link below to the website of auto air colors. These paints go on easy, but are water based so a clear is required to protect the paint job. If I had goofed, it would have been relatively easy to wash the old paint off and start over. This paint can not be sanded between coats or after a coat prior to clear coating.

http://www.autoaircolors.com/products/paint/series4500/series4500_frames.html

Color on the hull

Here is the 1st coat of the color paint on the hull. It is a 'sparklescent' color from autoaircolors.com. It is supposed to sparkle when the sun hits it. Prior to painting the color on the hull, Hew suggested we sand down the 'tape line' from when we taped the hull to reference the blue paint. Hew took some 380 grit wet sand paper and v e r y lightly he sanded this small ridge down. After talking with Dave today, he said looking back at it, we never should have laid the tape down. It may have been better to just paint the whole hull blue, then taped off the stripe, then spray the white. This would have eliminated the lip of paint from the tape and would have maybe helped the white lay down more even. It took many coats of the white to cover where the blue and the gray primer met. Arm chair quarterbacking? Naw, just a lesson for next time using these paints.

Covering up the white bottom and blue boot stripe

Here is Hew and Al helping me to cover the white bottom and the blue boot stripe. We would have used regular newspaper, but Al learned from experience that the ink in the newsprint will bleed over to the white paint and ruin the white paint. Luckily he had some blank blueprint type paper that we used to cover the white hull.

White paint on the hull

Here I am with a blow dryer blowing some hot air on the fresh paint. The paint I am using is water based, so the coats can go down pretty quickly, one after another. It is a good idea to dry the paint before putting on the next coat, so the blow dryer was used to speed the drying process up a little. After many coats I finally got the results i was looking for.

Blue Boot Stripe - II

Here you can see the yellow tape we laid on the hull near the waterline. This will be the blue boot stripe. It was difficult to get the tape to lay down with a nice curve and remain on the water line. We took a laser level and set it up on a bench across from the hull and we then 'leveled' the boat so the line hit the bow at the water line and at the stern at the waterline, or maybe it would be better to say where the design water line is supposed to be. Anyway, with the room dark, so the laser beam was more visible I used small tabs of blue painters tape and marked the laser line every couple of inches or so. The lights were then turned back on and Dave helped me to lay this yellow tape so one edge hits these small bits if blue tape used to mark the line. After a few 'do-overs' we get the line to look right, with no obvious sharp curves or bends. We then did the same procedure for the other side. After both sides were done we then looked at both sides together to see how they looked. It looked fined and I then proceeded with the white paint.

Blue Boot Stripe

I decided to make the paint scheme a bit difficult for the 1st time painter (me). Al and Dave helped me to figure out how to do this. I put on some painters tape on the hull in an area where was we did not want to continue with the blue stripe paint, as a reference line. I sprayed the hull from one side of the painters tape to the other side, completely covering the bottom of the hull in blue.

Hull faired, primed and ready for final paint!

Well, I spent some time on Friday sanding down some Bondo and filling some dings and dents in the hull, trying to get it ready for final paint. Saturday I took the hull by Hew's shop for his 'once-over'. Hew helped me fill in a few more low spots on the cockpit and helped me touch up a few areas on the bow. Finally the hull is ready for paint!