I decided to switch gears for a couple of days. As I said in an earlier post, the middle third of a project like this involves quite a bit of work and the boat basically looks the same at the end of the day as it did in the beginning.
I elected to do a first go-around on "body work" to prep for a coat of primer. I filled all of the screw holes (I thought), and tended to a bunch of miscellaneous dings, clamp marks, and the like. I knew that a first coat would expose more blemishes, and it did.
The meranti plywood I used for planking really drank up the primer. It will take at least three coats to fill the grain enough for paint, particularly if I go with a black topsides paint. No matter the color choice, I recommend a grey primer for the first coat. Think of it as a guide coat. When you sand it, the sanded areas will show lighter, thus highlighting missed screw holes, scratches, and tear-outs that will show up as dark spots. Fill them, sand them, and re-prime. Sand this coat of primer (the first real, full coat) to be sure that you got everything, and you can switch to a white primer from here out if you are painting a light color. Prime as many times as you need to for grain filling and uniformity. It pays off in the topcoat application. We'll cover that in a week or so (I hope).
I'm going back to slinging goo for the next few days. Forward rang is ready to laminate, and the inwale is a multi-piece part. The change of pace was a welcome respite.
No comments:
Post a Comment