Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Batboat Rebuild: Rebuilt Trailer and EasyPoxy Painting

On August 25th the gloss white and "Electric Blue" Easypoxy paint and some chopped strand mat fiberglass cloth was delivered by UPS.

Two days later I began to paint the stern and bottom of the hull.

But first....

....Holy Anvil and Hammer! I got my trailer back from the blacksmith the next day!

I visited Barney's Blacksmith the day before to see if it was ready and he almost had it in 100 pieces on the shop floor! I thought a simple spot weld or two would do and drove home worried about the cost.

Turns out he repaired and rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up and only charged $100! I am eternally grateful. He did a wonderful job on it.

It is now level and true, not twisted and bent up. Just like new. :)

The next day I put the first coat of EasyPoxy "Electric Blue" on the hull. For this I used 4 inch foam rollers, found at most hardware stores. A member of the iboats forum who had just finished working on his fiberglass boat highly recommended them to me.

12 ounces of paint was poured in the pan at a time and I rolled it on easily. There is a trick to keeping a wet edge but its not hard to figure out.

I only coated the stern and bottom going up to the tip of the bow because I still had to flip the boat over and thought that in doing so the paint job may be damaged. That had to wait for later.

That high gloss EasyPoxy Electric Blue marine paint really pops! Unlike the primers I used, it does not take much to get a nice coat. After rolling it the paint spreads out and fills in imperfections very well.

Another two coats need to go on it and then after a 7+ day cure time it goes back on the trailer.


I came upon big problems with the paint. The next day when I sanded with 120 grit the soft paint gummed up the paper quickly. Here is the result. The paint is still like gel.

Much later when painting the white I found the best way to work with EasyPoxy is to roll on coats thin enough to see through a day or more apart otherwise it will not dry properly.

Roll it on real thin folks!

By the first week of September I had three good layers on it and it was ready for the flip.

2 comments:

Champion Trailers said...

I feel bad for your trailer when it had to be scattered into a hundred pieces, as how you saw it on the floor. But that might have been the only way for the blacksmith to clearly see which areas need to be adjusted and fixed. And he did fix it successfully, so good job to the blacksmith! Anyway, the paint would likely be soft if it’s not dried properly. You should apply thin layer at a time and let it dry before you proceed to second coating.

Jessica @ChampionTrailers.com

Mark's Auto Trim said...

Wow! This is amazing blog,i never had seen earlier this type of post which explain very well. Thanks for sharing keep it. Boat covers in Oshawa Ontario
Boat carpet in Oshawa Ontario