Woohoo! Paint Time

I'm only painting the permiter and cabin top.  I don't see the point in wasting expensive paint on the middle parts that are going to be covered with KiwiGrip.

It's been a long time coming, but I've finally gotten to the paint stage (mostly).  The cockpit is another story that I'll work on over the coming months, but I decided it was time to get the decks officially done.  So over the weekend I managed to get 2 coats of Interlux Perfection on the deck perimeter and the cabin top.  It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's time to finish dammit!

The paint itself wasn't too difficult, but the prep seemed to take forever.  I spent 2.5 hours sanding everything with 220 grit and then another hour wiping everything down with the 2333N Brushing Reducer.  Once everything was ready, I mixed up 18 oz of paint (12oz paint and 6oz catalyst), let it sit for 20 minutes and then added 10% Brushing reducer.  I've heard that by thinning to the full 10% you can get away with rolling and not tipping (I just suck at tipping, it never, ever turns out well).  The idea is that with the paint thin enough, it will flow out well, leaving a smooth finish.  I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

After 2 days, everything had fully cured and I was amazed at how hard the finish was.  It just has a different feel than the primer or even the epoxy for that matter.  Anyway, good stuff.  For the second coat, I sanded everything with 320 grit and repeated the process; long and tedious, but it looked even better because it fully covered any underlying color that still showed through the primer.

I hope to do a final coat this week, but I'll be adding a flattening agent to cut down on the gloss (and it will help hide some of the imperfections that are really obvious with the high gloss).  I haven't decided to flatten to semi-gloss or to satin yet, but the ratio is 1:1 and 2:1 flattener to paint respectively.

In other news, I finally finished up the dinghy project (mostly) and got my son out on a local pond for a sail (here).