Hello all, newb from Maine. I have been lurking for a while thanks for all the great infomation. I have a stripper that I built 22 years ago. I redid the outside with epoxy several years ago but the resin cured very cloudy. It was my fault for working in damp garage. I would like to grind off the cloudy resin and refinish, to make the old girl presentable again. Should I try to sand of the resin without hitting the cloth and do a new coat of epoxy or should I try to take the cloth off and start at the wood. The hull is still solid, and the cloth does not show any signs of delamination. If I recall correctly the epoxy was MAS, it was the first time I worked with epoxy. The boat was originally done with poly. Thanks for your help!
Epoxy is cloudy
- Thread starter Crockett
- Start date
Todd Bradshaw
Sailmaker
You could certainly try sanding down into the filler coats a bit in an effort to determine where in the various layers, or how deep, the cloudy stuff is, but there is no guarantee that it will cure the problem. Stopping at just the right point with a sander that's powerful enough to cut through resin is pretty tricky. You can wipe down the sanded surface with water and while it's still wet, you can get a pretty good idea of how it will look with new resin and varnish on top of it and/or whether it fixes the cloudy resin problem.
Stripping and re-glassing is an awful lot of work and expense, a lot of which is really tedious, back-asswards boat building. It would have to be an awfully good boat before I'd do that. It's probably faster, easier and produces a better end result to just build another one.
As for this one, I'd probably give it a good 100 grit sanding to freshen-up the surface and then give it a couple coats of good marine enamel in some nice color. The very idea of paint freaks out a lot of strip builders, but luckily I built enough strippers that the novelty of the whole "strippy-stripey" thing kind of wore off. Most of the time, I look for a nice profile first. Whether it's red, green or natural cedar strips with little easter bunnies inlayed into it doesn't seem to matter much. It does also offer the attractive option of a couple hours of light sanding and a $25 can of paint fixing the problem. With the other options, you're going to be there for quite a while.
Stripping and re-glassing is an awful lot of work and expense, a lot of which is really tedious, back-asswards boat building. It would have to be an awfully good boat before I'd do that. It's probably faster, easier and produces a better end result to just build another one.
As for this one, I'd probably give it a good 100 grit sanding to freshen-up the surface and then give it a couple coats of good marine enamel in some nice color. The very idea of paint freaks out a lot of strip builders, but luckily I built enough strippers that the novelty of the whole "strippy-stripey" thing kind of wore off. Most of the time, I look for a nice profile first. Whether it's red, green or natural cedar strips with little easter bunnies inlayed into it doesn't seem to matter much. It does also offer the attractive option of a couple hours of light sanding and a $25 can of paint fixing the problem. With the other options, you're going to be there for quite a while.
Rob Stevens
Wooden Canoes are in the Blood
I agree with Todd. The potential for totally screwing up a useable boat just isn't worth trying to get the glass off without damaging the wood.
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