Paint/finishing

[Erik Schmalz]

Home again from my usual 6wks at the lake. I didn’t get as much time on the Swift as I’d have liked, but I did make some progress in the last week. Mostly, I need to get less scared of it, which is hard when I’m out there by myself.

In any case, now that I’m home, before I put it to sleep for the season, I want to do a little work on it. I need to fill some unused holes, make the jib track move look better, and I’d like to better fair a few things. If I get really ambitious, I might try to get rid of some of the hull paint. I’d prefer showing off more wood (wait…that might have come out wrong…).

This whole boat was sprayed with automotive clear coat before hardware was added. The finish is hard and shiny, and that’s great, but the more little damage/fixes get done, the worse it looks, so what’s the “normal” way of covering the boat? I’m 100% confutable with paint and varnish from classic wooden boats, but nothing about the Swift Solo seems standard, so I figure I should ask.

[William Scheumann]

Erik,
Most builders applied multiple coats of marine varnish, like Epifanes Clear, to the deck and other areas where the cedar strips were visible through the S-glass. As the hull is the first item that is glassed with S-glass and it is a large surface, there is the chance of overworking the epoxy when wetting out the glass, resulting in a cloudy or streaky glass layup. That happened on USA020, so for appearances, I painted the topsides with Epifanes Two-Part Polyurethane Marine paint. In your case, stripping or sanding down the hull to remove the automotive paint and clear coat will be a great deal of work with little benefit if the glass finish over the cedar strips is cloudy. I recommend the Epifanes or other marine two part paints if you decide to go that route. They hold up well to abuse and you can achieve a mirror finish with wet sanding several coats. Best of luck with your repairs.

Bill Scheumann

Sent from my iPad

> On Aug 18, 2021, at 2:57 PM, Erik Schmalz <thist...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Home again from my usual 6wks at the lake. I didn’t get as much time on the Swift as I’d have liked, but I did make some progress in the last week. Mostly, I need to get less scared of it, which is hard when I’m out there by myself.

>
> In any case, now that I’m home, before I put it to sleep for the season, I want to do a little work on it. I need to fill some unused holes, make the jib track move look better, and I’d like to better fair a few things. If I get really ambitious, I might try to get rid of some of the hull paint. I’d prefer showing off more wood (wait…that might have come out wrong…).
>
> This whole boat was sprayed with automotive clear coat before hardware was added. The finish is hard and shiny, and that’s great, but the more little damage/fixes get done, the worse it looks, so what’s the “normal” way of covering the boat? I’m 100% confutable with paint and varnish from classic wooden boats, but nothing about the Swift Solo seems standard, so I figure I should ask.
>

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[Erik Schmalz]

Thanks for the reply. At this point, most of what I want to do is painted, and will remain painted. My deck is part paint, part clear, as seems to be the usual way, then all sprayed clear over it. Because I can’t match the clear coated white, I’m considering changing the paint color, so that was the most important question (and you answered it).

Thanks for the warning about the epoxy, too. I am definitely worried about why the sides are painted and not bright, but I do have all of the build pics and I haven’t found any problems. The finish overall isn’t perfect, with some inconsistencies visible in the bright finished parts of the deck, but I wouldn’t consider it bad. As soon as I sent the message yesterday, I went out and sanded some of the transom (which was painted). It’s a lot of work to get the paint off without screwing up what’s underneath, but it looks good, so I’m encouraged. Maybe I won’t get to the sides, but I’ll be happier with the transom varnished.

-erik

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/swiftsolo/AF910C50-E8B4-4D7F-A57F-13C9384E5786%40gmail.com.