Cockpit Floor Refinish
Well, as with most things I initially thought I could avoid having to completely re-do this part, but the more I looked at it, the more I knew what I had to do. I didn't want to totally re-paint the floor and then have it crack because of some soft spots. So, after I get all the old paint off I am going to cut open the section under the ladder because its soft.
One personal beef I have with boat builders is using screws with cored sections. I completely understand the need for cored parts of a boat, and I completely understand the need for screws, but I totally don't get using the two together. So much core damage could be avoided if these fittings were through bolted, and then rubber gaskets used underneath the fixtures. Oh, well it is what it is!
First up was getting all the old paint off. I counted 5 different colors as I got into it. Dark green, light green, tan, grey then white. I forgot to take a picture befor I started, but this is after I started using a chemical stripper from Interlux
This worked ok, but it was expensive $80 for one gallon, messy and slow.
One place the stripper worked quite well on was the trough for the cockpit hatch.
After a bit of that I used a grinding wheel with 36 grit paper. This certainly sped the process up, but it was too abrasive in some parts.
I'm down to mostly just gray!
In order to use the boat, I had to temporarily fix the ladder to the floor. I'm going to be cutting this section open any way.
Well, kept plugging away, mostrly with a palm sander and 40 grit paper.
I'm down to what seems like gelcoat. I have not had time to really finish this as I need to cut out a section where the fly bridge ladder attaches, its soft as "cream cheese" under there. I put the ladder back down, and when I have a chance will carry on. My plan is Awlgrip, but would like to get a quote on that fake teak for the heck of it.
Go here to see the replacement of the rotted balsa core there was a large section underneath the fly bridge ladder that had become saturated and sift. I cut that section out, replaced the core, and glassed it back over.
After the core was fixed, I taped off the floor. I am going to roll a few coats of epoxy over the floor because I am concerned about the number of hairline cracks in it. Even though I fixed the rotted part, there is still moisture in parts of the core and i'm concerned about an increase in the cracks.
After I rolled on the second coat, I noticed an odd occurance of small craters in the epoxy about the size of a pencil eraser. I have rolled out a fair amount of epoxy and never had this happen. I researched a bit and the two most plausible explanations I found were some sort of contamination, or the surface was to hot when I applied. I'm not sure what happend, it was quite warm that day, and due to another problem I explain further down it may have been Anine I did not properly remove. If you look closely at the below picture you can see a few of the craters. These were a major nuisance as I had to sand everything down, and ended up doing another coat.
Some projects you just run into problems on, and this was one. On the last coat I rolled on, A sticky element appeared on the epoxy after it cured. As with the small craters, I just dont know what caused this, it did rain slightly on the epoxy after I rolled it on, but I really dont know if this was connected. I tried to remove it with acetone with no luck, then heavy sanding but that was slow. I then began thinking about Anine again, which is a byproduct of any epoxy curing process. Its a simple matter of removing it between coats basically with soap and water, so I tried cleaning it with Windex, and sure enough it came right off.
Here it is;
Well, after I got thru all that I rolled on the Algrip Primer, it was good to get on with this part of the job, where you can start to see some real improvement.
For information on the mixing and application process of the Primer go to the section on ther Fly Bridge Make Over and scroll down a bit.
Here is just the mixing info for the primer;
1 part; Awlgrip 545 Epoxy Primer-Base (D8001 White)
1 part; Primer converter; D3001
20% of the above mixture; Reducer brushing T0031
Here is the floor after a few coats of primer
Now on to the top coat!
Here it is after three coats, overall I'm pretty pleased with it but just as I did on the fly bridge, I struggled to apply the non skid as evenly as I wanted to. I ended up using a salt shaker, but there has to be a better way.
Here is the floor with the ladder reattached. I very much wanted to thru bolt it into the floor, but as luck would have it one side of it was right over a stringer for the floor. There was no way to bolt through that side, so I ended up screwing it back down, as it was originally.
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