Stripping bottom paint

Posted By: Dave
Date: 9/6/07 7:06p.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

I thought I'd throw this out to anyone contemplating stripping the bottom paint off their boat. I purchased a 1982 SF26 this year and it had more than 1/8" of buildup of old layers of bottom paint over the entire bottom. Previous owners never removed the buildup; they just kept adding more. I wanted to remove the paint in the most environmentally considerate way possible, partially because I store the boat in my backyard and we have all types of wildlife rambling through,(I feed the birds and deer) so I chose Franmar Chemical's Soystrip liquid stripper. This product is an environmentally friendly marine coating remover made from soybeans. I purchased direct from the manufacturer and they shipped it UPS to my house. It took less than 2 gallons to complete the job and this included the bootop stripe which was painted with many layers of alkyd enamel. In short, the product works very very well. I developed a technique whereby I painted the remover on very thickly and then covered the area with plastic food wrap to keep it wet as long as possible. After a couple of hours I would knead the area slightly to introduce more stripper to deeper layers of paint. The plastic prevents direct contact with the paint remover. After 5-6 hours it is time for the ground tarp and putty knife to remove the bulk and then a 3M green coarse scrubber dipped in soystrip to get the remainder. Bottom line is I stripped a 26 foot hull down to bright white gelcoat with two gallons of stripper and never exposed myself or the neighborhood to sanding dust or methelyne chloride. I thought this might be of interest to any old boat owner. Dave