Removing 20-plus years of paint
So, the boat has 20 years of paint on it. And it’s green. I really like green (it is easily the dominant color in my wardrobe), but not on Centennial for some reason. And I wanted to give her a fresh start on Lake Erie.
I knew that the job of sanding all that paint off would drag all through the summer (and be a drag generally), so I resolved to get her soda-blasted and in the water during 2009. A little expensive (it costs more than the paint, actually), but, from what I’ve read in my research, quick and very effective.
Now that I’ve had a day’s exposure to the process, I’m really glad I didn’t try a DIY solution. Turns out that the paint on Centennial is pretty serious stuff. Even switching to glass beads, it would have taken several days to remove all of the green paint, and the many layers of salt-water bottom paint had the dude from Blasterclean shaking his head. It also billowed out of the tent he made, which made me nervous about the yard getting on my case. And it inflamed my sinuses. Blech.
There’ll still be quite a bit of green paint on her when we start repainting, but it’ll be green paint that wouldn’t come off with glass bead blasting, so I figure it’ll make a fine surface. And I’m going with some high-quality black stuff, so coverage will not be an issue.
The pic is also a link to the other pictures.