Big Ocean Small Boat

Today, with the boat out of the water, I washed the entire hull, deck to waterline. Then I used 1500 grit wet sand paper on a block (and a hose) to remove the old lettering from the stern and rear hull quarters. This takes a lot of sand paper, even when the lettering is old and thin. Learning: Do not ever use the sandpaper off the block, even though it’s tempting to do so in order to get the last little bit of paint. It leaves little finger shaped traces that then have to be buffed out.

After it dried, I used Trewax rubbing compound on a cloth bonnet on a cheesy 10″ random orbit car polisher that I have. After quite a while, I got that dull rubbed look that I’m pretty sure will polish out to a nice gloss. However, it’s slow with the wimpy polisher. I may have to drive around tomorrow looking for a more burly polisher, like a 7-inch Makita 9227 (good for compounding and polishing), or a random-orbit Porter-Cable 7424/7336 (which I can apply wax with too).

Insanely detailed post on polishing your boat: http://www.sailnet.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29825

The types of bonnets/pads to use are a little confusing. So far, it seems like:

Compound: Wool bonnet or disc. It seems that it’s necessary to have several to switch as they get clogged.
Polish: “White foam polishing pad”, whatever that is.
Finishing/Waxing: By hand I guess, with cloths, or with a “black foam finishing pad”.

The worst stain that any of my boats have ever had is the gunk from the tops of the fenders rubbing off onto (and into) the hull below the stanchions. I’m going to try a couple more solvents. I’ve already tried orange 409. Next is “goo gone”, then paint thinner and/or acetone.

Updates:

Bought a 6″ Porter Cable 7336 at Rafael Lumber. Drove around for about 2 hours looking for polishing pads. Found some smaller pads, which didn’t work that well. If I was doing it again, I’ll bet the 7″ constant speed polishers are more efficient for boat-sized projects. However, I bought some diaper cloths, which were worth every penny for arduously polishing out the boat wax when you are out of too-small pads.

Bought some goo-gone on the side skid-marks. Didn’t work. Tried acetone, took the nastiness right off.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 7:46 pm and is filed under maintenance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.