With the boat on the dolly it's time to clean up the top side. Earlier on in the project I started with sanding the entire top side with the random orbital sander, grinding out the crazing, cracks and damaged areas to fill with the fairing compound. Once I had that all completed I applied one coat of epoxy primer in white.
That first coat of the epoxy primer was a good base, but definitely needed a second coat. I ended up sanding the entire topside to try to get it as smooth as possible and going over with the fairing compound for a second time to fix any blemishes. For the second coat, I opted for the high build epoxy primer to try to get into any micro issues that I just couldn't sand out. AND agin, sanded the entire topside again by hand with 220 grit. At this point the boat is primed, smooth as a babies bottom, vacuumed, cleaned with acetone and ready for the topside TotalBoat Wet Edge paint.
First coat of topside paint made it on as soon as the weather was warm enough. Decided to roll it on with a 4" roller, but seeing some drip lines. Need to sand down some of those areas and for the second coat use the roll and tip method. I'll probably get 2 more coats on as long as the weather cooperates. Too cold now, need to wait until the spring to finish it up.
UPDATE - cold weather disaster....got a little too excited and tried to get another coat of the paint on, but it was spidered, cracked, and generally crappy. I'm going to attribute it to the cold weather, rather than poor workmanship.
Only one thing to do - and that's sand it down (again), get another coat of primer on (again) and then paint (again).
Weather gets a little nicer and boom...back to the primer (again)...went on great, going to do a second coat and then sand it smooth for the topside paint.
(Second) First coat of wet edge topside paint...amazing what a little sun and warm weather will do....looks like I won't be able to get the next coat on for another couple of weeks as it gets cold again, but so far so good
Got my (second) second & third coat on...very exciting progress now. Will need to do a final few touch ups, but other than that, we are moving on to interior.
