Saturday, 19 February 2011

Restoration of Kittiwake (part 3)

Ever heard the well known phrase "it's like watching paint dry"? Well, Paul describes just how much of that he's been doing in part 3 of his restoration project.....

Part 3, painting and varnishing and more repairs 14/11/10 - 20/12/10 about 5 weeks.
Due to weathering on the wood I was fairly sure the majority of the hull would have to be painted but I could see what looked like a sound wood line along the top of the hull. I decided to leave a strip of wood that I would varnish. To give a nice clean line I glued some mahogany strips along the side. I also wanted to reinforce the rear seat as it was a little flexible as the ply has been repaired so I also added some more strips on here and screwed them through the ply into the underside strips. I also replaced all the brass screws that I could, most were badly corroded as she'd been in the sea at some stage in her life. Now she was ready for paint.But what paint? I wasn't going to cut corners here but after reading up decided that epoxy based paint might be too stiff for an old wooden hull. International paints toplac is not a paint that is designed for permanent submersion but as I can't see her being in the water for more than 8 - 10 hours I think It's good enough for that. For the varnish I settled for Deks Olje 1 & 2 because of the good penetration and ease of repair.Shopping list: Paint all 750ml - 2 x grey Yacht primer. 1 x white precote. 1 x red precote. 1 x rustic red toplac. 1 x ivory toplac. Varnish all 1 ltr 2x deks' part 1. 2 x deks' part 2. The wife was right, this was starting to cost!So reading the instructions on the tin this was going to take a while! 4 x primer 2 undercoat 1 x 50:50 mix and 2 x top coat, that's 9 days per colour, never mind the varnish which is 1 coat of penetration plus 6 top coats, so 7 days for the underside and another 7 for the inside. Almost forgot, the inside has some white. That's another 9 days. I started painting/varnishing one coat per day on 11 Nov and finished 5 weeks later. A little time consuming but worth every minute, well I think it was, you decide..........................I might be slightly bias plus I'm still suffering withdrawal symptoms from lack of paint fumes.

More next week, Paul.

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