HydroSkreamin
Stress Eliminator
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2014
- Messages
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Probably won’t be beaching anytime soon, eh?
Nice work

Nice work

This is the saddest thing I've read so far!I keep a sidearm in a small gun safe mounted to my night stand that uses my fingerprint to open it
Damn good looking!Well, its finally shiny.
Each wet sanding grit took about 4 hours, so there are 20 hours of wet sanding alone on the bottom. I understand better now why some guys "speed coat" the bottom to avoid the final finishing. Looking back I should have gone to 1200 and maybe even 1500 before polishing. I had to "lean" on the buffer a little more than I wanted to get the 1000 grit scratches out. If I ever do one of these again I will look into a pneumatic wet D/A sander. It would have sped up the process a bunch although it would have its own learning curve too.
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Another important lesson: Hand sanding for 20+ plus hours has a negative effect on your fingers. I keep a sidearm in a small gun safe mounted to my night stand that uses my fingerprint to open it. After day one of sanding it wouldn't open anymore. After day two, my hands started to bleed because the skin wasn't there anymore to hold the blood in...
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Overall I am very happy with the results. Its straight and flat where it should be, the strakes and chines are razor sharp and it finished to a nice high gloss. Pretty good for a first timer.
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Next up; routing the cav plate pockets for 1/4" thick plates and adding the blast plate pocket.
Great work, Lenman, looks awesome!My boat was originally built with 3/16" thick aluminum cav plates and I will be running 1/4" thick stainless so the pockets would normally need to be routed 1/16" deeper. Because I added material near the keel to straighten the bottom out the pockets were actually a little too deep. I taped up the work area to keep the shiny part shiny and added a quick layer of CSM to build up the deep section. I built a router fixture and used glaziers suction cup handles to clamp the fixture down, cleaned up the fresh glass and brought the rest of the pocket in to the 1/4" depth using a 3/4" diameter bearing guided router bit. Both sides came out nice and sanded flat with a little 180 grit.
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I laid out the blast plate pocket, taped the surrounding gel coat, and used the same fixture to rout the pocket to 1/8" deep, one side at a time.
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Cutting away the shiny hard shell reveals evidence of work done months ago.
Next up: I need to clean up and re-carpet the bunks on the trailer. Then flip the boat back upright, slide the trailer under it, adjust and shim the bunks to provide maximum support to preserve my hard work and set her down.
I was at Pat's when he hauled out the last load of trash. All the equipment was goneI hope this rumor about Pat's is true. I will say, the craftsmen who worked on the three boats pictured in post #167 will do an amazing job Lenmann, so I dont think you can go wrong either way. You're doing an incredible job, thank you for the update!!
Thanks! The hull is down at Menace Marine in Castaic for balsa and gelcoat. No real updates yet, like every other shop they are busy as fack and I am in the queue. I was hoping to have it back in October but its looking more like November which really means December. I have a new trailer being built at Adrenaline and they are so busy they cant start on it until the second week of October so maybe all the stars will line up here for me and both will be ready at the same time.Bumping this back to the top where it needs to be.![]()
I believe that they have the whole thing powder coated in one color as a base and then paint the accent colors and clear over the whole thing.Anyone know how Schiada gets gel coat to stick to aluminum tanks?
I did the math on what I am pretty sure is the original part of the tank and it matches up with the 30 gallons on the original IMCO sticker. Then I calculated the volume of the addition and got about 15 gallons IIRC.Funny my tanks are the same and look as if they were made bigger as well at one point.
Huh, hadn't thought about that. Powder coat is usually polyester powder, gel coat is a polyester based resin system. They should be compatible.I believe that they have the whole thing powder coated in one color as a base and then paint the accent colors and clear over the whole thing.
I have 45 gallon tanks In mineTo add to the tank volume mystery, My boat is a 81'. It was raced in the Catalina event. The tanks have been extended and they hold almost 40gals per side.
The last step in the job is to spray the non-skid with a light coat of thinned white gelcoat. Like every paint or coating job, good surface prep is critical to assure adhesion and enough coverage to match the other white gel and not make the non-skid look like cottage cheese by applying too much gel.What’s your plan for the non skid? Thin coat of paint over the top?
The proper method is to have the tank Chromate (iridite) coated MIL-DTL-5541 Class 2 Type 3 Light Yellow. Ask the coater if they use Chemetall Chromicoat L25 Yellow and then have them powder coated in a basic polyester. Then feel free to Gel Coat to your hearts content.Anyone know how Schiada gets gel coat to stick to aluminum tanks?
You should look for a plating shop to do it for you. It's fairly cheap for Class 3, a little more for Class 1A ( heavy yellow). The process is to clean/de-grease Sprex or JS-700, Then to etch with sodium hydroxide (Oakite 160), rinse, a de-ox dip and rinse to clear the oxide from the etch and then into the Chromicoat. and rinse. Need to set for 24 hours before powder coating.@Ouderkirk
I like the conversion coating idea, hadn't ever thought about it being used under polyester powder, but I will ask my local PC guy if he does it.
Is Chromicoat L25 comparable to Chem-Film or Dow 7 alodine?
Where would one find Chromicoat L25 for sale?