Day 331

The weather has been a bit shakey lately, especially in the afternoons, but we took the chance and sprayed on the hippo coat today. I had to re-mask some of the bulwarks that had been rubbed off during a thunderstorm by the tarp. After that we were on our way.

Gena has had some experience with using an undercoat gun before, so she did all the spraying and I did the mixing. She was spraying it out faster than I could mix it up!

As the kits are made for lining one truck box, they are in small cans, 2 to a box, which is ok for a truck! We couldn't mix it all together and add the hardener and tint because it begins to set up in about 20 minutes.

The contraption to the right is an air dryer from Princess Auto. Unfortunately they didn't have any pellets at the Edmonton branch so poor Gena had to go all the way down to Red Deer to get some.

Air dryer for compressor

Meanwhile, I did the final coat of Ceram-Kote on the bulwarks so the day wasn't wasted.

Back to the air dryer, it's a very necessary thing to put in line with a compressor, especially if the air is humid. Spraying on anything but latex without it will result in missed spots or lifting due to trapped water under the coat. The chemicals are removed by the water that allows hardening and a soft spot may occur.

This coating is fairly high risk with unpredictable weather because it takes 24 hours to be "light duty" cured. We had planned to put up a few over height stanchions with T's and rope to hold the tarp up, but the wind of a T-storm would push the tarp into the coating at the cabin top. All we could do was pray.

Because of the possible weather, Gena began with the most vulnerable area, the cockpit and coaming sides. After that she did the pilot house followed by the cabin top. The deck was sprayed next with the swim platform last.

The roughness of the surface can be controlled by how close ( or far ) the gun is held while spraying. But care must be taken not to get too close or it will "blob" or worse, run. Pretty thick stuff though, goes on nicely.

The cans made a big sticky mess ha ha. I won't even show you the tailgate on our pickup. ( OMG! )

Originally, we were going to purchase 16 kits. The salesman mentioned they come in cases of 3 so Gena told him to make it 18 instead.
It was just enough!! There was barely 15 seconds of spray left once the swim platform was finished. Amazing!

Big mess of cans, tops, boxes

Top sides complete! The worlds largest box-liner!

We must have had a horse shoe up our "you know what's" because the sky stayed clear all night and it didn't rain until the next evening. That's a first for the last month! We celebrated completion of the topsides with the neighbors for a bit.

About the color....

White is nice, white hides imperfections, white is common, white gets dirty really easy and shows it well. I have been on a couple of white decked boats and it is a constant job to keep white. Any dirt looks like a complete catastrophe on white.

We want to go cruising, not cleaning, and besides that, we like to be different!

Can't wait to pull off the rest of the mask! The coating mustn't be tacky when we do that, but also shouldn't be too hard or it will need to be cut off.

A word of advice to anyone doing this part of the boat, plan to take a couple of weeks off work! It takes time, and is hard work.

Day 331 - 9 hours (5 spraying, 4 cleaning up and peeling tape): Sprayed on "Color your Hippo" top coat.

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