Anyone ever refinished an aluminum boat?  I'm currently stripping the paint and planning on repainting it.  Lots of work!  Any tips from anyone who's ever fixed on up?

Thanks,

Mark

Type III Hardcoat.

What?

or alodyne and then a good epoxy paint.

Any recomendations for a GOOD epoxy paint?

Bed liner.

Inside or outside of the boat?

What are you using the boat for? Inside for sure but just on the bottom. If your going to beat it up do the outside also they get a little heavy though. I did a my duck boat with bed liner both in and out then camo. You can't believe how tough that stuff is. It's been going strong for three seasons.

I used multiple coats of Krylon exterior paint on my old boat, held up real well

Got pictures if you're interested

Absolutely!  Lets see them!

I used a gallon of rustollium.  worked very good.  the paint job lasted 1 year now.

I used a spraygun (oil based) with min spirits.

Before



During



After



Used the Krylon camo series OD green, 3 coats, with about 2 hours wait time in between coats, the other colors were done with a brush, so those didn't hold up as well, damn I miss that boat

Anyone know where to get some of the green jon boat paint?  I want to brush or roll it on, not rattle cans.

Thanks

Depends on what you are trying to do to it. Is it going to be a quicky paint job and you don't care if it flakes off and scrapes off easily? Or is this a boat that you are going to keep and only want to paint it once? Budget?

I worked for several years working for a company that built custom ambulances as a painter, all the mods(bodies) were made from aluminum. Aluminum is great stuff to build with be it has certain drawback, the biggest one is it's poor adheasion properties. It's also a self-healing metal. So that pretty much means you have to sand it very good and it must be painted within a 24 hour period or 48 hours max, otherwise you have to resand it. At least in our application, these were very highend ambulances and a large part of or reputation was the paint jobs.


Anyways, it's best to sand aluminum with 150 grit sandpaper and a DA(daul action) sander; a ordital or jitterbug will work fine, it will just take you longer. Then you have to clean the metal with a degreaser. Aluminum has to be primed twice unless you are using a DTM(direct to metal) paint. The first primer is an acid etching primer, they are a transparent greenish-yellow and smells like rotten eggs. Then you prime with a primer of your choice and paint over that.

If you have a budget of a few hundered dollars I would recomend going with a quality acid etching primer made from a manufacturer like PPG, DuPont, Sikkens, Speice Hecker or Sherman Williams. I'm not sure of all the companies names of the acid etch primer but DuPonts is called Color Wash primer and Sikkens is CR primer. Then you can finish it off with PPG's DP series of expoxy primer, they have different numbers depending on what color the primer is. DP40 is a greenish grey, DP90 is black, they have a grey, white and red oxide colors also. I painted my ATv with DP40 last summer and it's held up to some pretty good abuse from tree branches in the woods.

If you want the paint to stick to it, the very minium is an acid primer under cheap paint and primer. Another option is using some old school alcyd oil based enamel, that stuff sticks to most anything.

My wife and neighbors would kill me but I would SO rock that boat!