Paint Strip Test

July 19, 2015

I didn't have time for any extended work on the boat, but did want to at least conduct a test of the paint stripper on a small section of the bottom.  The brand, Jasco, states not to use on fiberglass, but given the amount of work ahead for me to restore the bottom, I figured I would give this product a shot.  The result was satisfactory; enough so that I planned to exhaust this small supply.  There is yet another paint stripper that I plan to use - especially formatted for boat hulls.  

For this test, I painted a rough 12" x 15" patch onto the bottom with a chip brush, waited 15 minutes, and then scrapped the paint off with a rigid plastic scrapper.  In fact, I ultimately worked a section of about two and a half feet by 1 foot, and then followed this up with a 40-grit pass with the 7335.  Since I had other plans for the day (weekend), I raced through this and didn't remember to snap post test pictures.

While I was hot, dirty, and sweaty, I went ahead and water-washed the previous round of epoxy work, and then sanded the surfaces.  I sanded the poop deck to fair - the area that once held the haws pipe (actually a deck fitting for the anchor chain and rode); I also roughed up the transom area that once held the stern light.  My previous fill was with a structural thickener (colloidal silica) great for gap filling.  I brought this application close to the surface of the gel coat, leaving once or perhaps two applications of the micro balloons for the final fairing work.  The picture below shows the rough sanding on the transom as well as the poop deck just prior to sanding this area fair.  As stated above, time was getting away from me and so pictures were carelessly left out.

Total Time: 1.5 Hrs.