Seagoon

Yum...

Ive got one the same - is it this one? http://www.fishraider.com.au/Invision/inde...st&p=135334 I recon you could almost get a 2nd hand one for that $$$ ? Just a guess, not an expert...

Cripes i hope not!!! But still, at least the red is on the correct side ;-) ie port

A couple more lessons were learned today. First, dont bother with cordless spray guns. They suck. Well, they dont suck, they blow, but pretty poorly! I was saying to another FR today that i might aswell have applied the paint by taking a mouthful of primer and blowing on with a big rasberry aboriginal-style. It would have been better than the cordless spray gun... Anyhow, loan of proper spray gun is being arranged...OK Masking tape. I recommend you buy the best quality stuff you can. Even the crap stuff, of which i used two rolls, is expensive for what it seems, so i think its a matter of choosing a brand, not a price. Boring topic i know, but basically, the masking tape body wasnt strong enough to survive being peeled off. In the end i felt like i had just scratched about 270 $2 scratchies for $0 winnings. I think you get the picture! We ended up brushing the paint on - once we realised that the cordless spray gun was a shocker, i went out and bought the best paint brushes i could get, and we brushed on the primer. It came up well, for brushing. I recon we could get a good finish brunshing the top coat on too, but ive spent so much time on this, i dont want to take short cuts at this stage. Will lightly sand, then spray on the top coat. Incidently - the paint i used was the stuff Bias sell - the red version of the primer brushes on easier (have no idea why). So, in the end, we got the bugger primed, which was good. Really good now that i think about it. It was yet another little hurdle-athon, but, its great to have it painted. No more cleaning aluminium for me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Accept maybe the gunwales... Picture attached. Looks funny with two different colour primers. Top coat scheduled for April. In the mean time, im on leave from boat work... think i might go fishing

Hey thanks for the encouragement fellas - makes me feel good! Its gonna be white, with a grey pinstripe, which is the orginal colours. Plastibond is an epoxy bog i guess you could say - it is a two part thing with a hardener. It smells like fibreglass - phew!!

Well, 5 chemicals, about a large tin of elbow grease, a few buckets of sweat, and i still dont have a drop of paint on my boat. I think i have scrubbed/sanded/scraped/wire brushed the entire surface of my boat... i dont want to know how many times!!! Im getting close though. The photo below is what it looks like at the moment - wrapped in plastic, after etching and before priming. Ideally, we would have etched then immediately primed, but we (my Dad and I) were simply to buggered to paint today, and the wind was up a bit... Priming will happen tomorrow AM, and then first top coat goes on 2 hours later. Final coat Tues, pin-stripe Wed. Do boats still come with pin stripes? Maybe i can leave that off... This has been an amazing experience, but so far, the amazingly satisfied feeling part hasnt happened! So far ive learned an amazing amount, spent an amazing amount of time, not quite an amazing amount of money, but nearly, and its also been amazingly frustrating too. Frustrating for two reasons - 1) id rather be fishing, and 2) the amount of work involved, and more specifically, the number of times i have gone over the whole boat with a chemical or tool. Paint stripper, aluclean, plasti bond, metal etch, masking tape, degreaser, wire brush, sand paper, scourer, scrapper, steel wool, sponge, rag, hose, bucket... aaaaagh!!! But, the light is at the end of the tunnel. And im really looking forward to putting the new fittings on the boat - that will be fun - the finishing touches. But anthing to do with paint... im over it!!! When i started this little endeavour, i had so much passion and drive, which is great - please dont let me turn you off if you are contemplating doing something similar. You may well be much better at it than me and do it much more efficiently. But, i have to say, given my time again, i would say "to hell with boat painting, im GOING FISHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Hey Kelvin, have you broken in the new boat yet!?

Yeah its the same with aeroplanes - the prop needs to take into account many factors. Im not an expert, just have flown many model aeroplanes and know that when you put the wrong sized prop on a motor, well, it goes very poorly. The number, size and pitch of the blades are the prop's variables, and i guess that has to be matched to the load and the engine... Basically with planes, for the same sized RPM, prop and same blade config, blades with a lesser pitch will go slower but will perform a bit better under heavy load, a bit like using a lower gear in a car. If your motor has the omph, then you can ramp the pitch up a bit and go faster and still have power. But as soon as the pitch is to large, well, with a load, you wont get too far if your motor does have the balls to push the volume of air that the prop is contacting. So many variables! So few brain cells!

Thanks everyone for your input :-) Geoff, you aint wrong! With that amount of corrosion, think of how well it has protected your boat! I must look into that, absolutely. Im getting close now! Plan to etch and paint this weekend :-)

G'day all, Am in the final stages of my tinnie painting preparation. Have found that what i though was just surface pitting is actually more sinister, and rather much deeper than 1st thought - about 0.5mm or so. Have got the aluclean doing its job thanks to some encouragement and advice from a fellow FR :-) just had to add more elbow grease and a wire brush :-) But, there is still rather a lot of oxide in the pitts. Im not worried about it, so long as i know that the paint is gonna stick to it. Will be doing the etch/prime/fill/topcoat type of approach. Is there any product that converts aluminium oxide so that paint will stick to it reliably and longish term? With steel you can by the converter that neutralises the rust so that you have something stable to paint. If the paint will stick to the al oxide, then thats fine. I have attached some photos of the boat, for interests sake. One is of it after stripping and before the wire brush. The next is after wire brushing, showing some pitting that was a result of a stainless steel bimni fitting on a rail, and the last is a test etching of a small spot. The etchant certainly cleans the Al, and removes some oxide too. Am planning more experiments with it b4 final etching. Thanks for any comments.

Congratulations :-) great to meet you on Sunday. I am still blown away by what a bloody amazing team Fishraider is! Giving the olypic voulenteers a run for their money i tell ya!!!

Hi Mel, dont work too hard, its un-Australian!!

Haha, ive got two good reasons to be happy today, the first being the super social event. I didnt fish but loved it. It was great to meet a whole lot of new people and also to see how people can pull together for a common cause & passion just for the love of it and friendship with others. Heartwarming! The BBQ went down really well too The second reason is im not called Johblow anymore hahahaha. Thank God for that! Cant wait for the next social. Hope my boat is floating by then :-)