Bahco 665 Carbide Edged H/Duty Paint Scraper

Product Information

When choosing your antifouling you need to find out what will work best on your type of boat and which will be most effective in your sea area. After six hours, the RemovAll had bitten through the top layer of paint Removing antifouling – Method 1. Dry scraping

Use a brush for fiddly bits around transducers and stern gear. For a really smooth finish, someone can follow you with a pad to smooth ridges and remove dribbles. You can them prime them with epoxy primer to stop any water ingress, before sealing the gap with Sikaflex or another flexible underwater sealant. Before you antifoul, consider a further coat of a tie coat primer like Primocon before you paint on the antifouling. Which roller to use for antifouling Eroding antifoulings will typically not survive speeds above 25 knots, although Seajet claim 40 knots for many of their products. To combat this, hard paints are typically applied to planing powerboats.Would I scrape off antifouling again? No. Absolutely not! But there’s truth in the expression, “you have to do a job first to understand why it’s worth paying someone”. Thanks to our Project Boat Supporters Use a number of bits of masking tape to ensure a fair curve around the stem How to mask a straight line A boot-top line really adds to the look of a boat. What’s more, it ensures the hull will stay free of fouling and contaminants. If your hull is always stained yellow at the end of the season, consider raising the boot top and antifouling level by a few inches. Leaving the stripper to work for 10 minutes each time, we got down to the primer after three applications. The Interstrip will leave the primer untouched, ready for the new coat of antifouling.

We tried the three most readily available recommended products: International Paint’s Interstrip AF, Owatrol’s Marine Strip (formerly called Dilunet) and Removall 620 from Cirrus Systems. Interstrip AFThe gap between the horizontal red dotted line and the pale cream section (leached area) is where the paint has eroded when the boat moves. The leached area is the part of the antifouling film which has lost all its biocide through leaching, but because the boat has not been used enough, the dead paint has not been eroded away. Old antifouling and marine growth is easier to remove before it hardens out of the water over winter and it saves time in the springtime. Should I prime my hull? If they won’t do that, you can slap some paint on while the boat is in the slings – but this won’t give you the required two coats or, with most paints, the correct drying time.

A further application would have revealed the epoxy coating on top of the gel coat. It was viscous enough to not drip when applied. Change sandpaper regularly – as soon as it begins to lose its bite. Barnacle remains need very thorough treatment, as their cement contains a hormone which encourages young barnacle ‘spat’ to settle nearby. So sand off all this cement until none is left. Scraping is the cheapest way to take paint off. But which is the best scraper to use? We tried three – a traditional flat-bladed ‘push’ scraper, a triangular paint scraper and a Bahco ‘pull’ scraper with tungsten-carbide blades. Flat-bladed scraperUsually, high speeds will dislodge fouling from the hull of a regularly-used boat, but if you only go afloat occasionally you may need to scrub the hull. As with racing sailing boats, you can choose between an antifouling with or without Teflon.

This magnified image (supplied by International Paints) is a cross-section of a self-eroding antifouling paint. The yellow bit on the left hand side is a control section which shows the paint as it is when applied new.The DIY soda blasting option was slow but effortless. A compressor with a bigger capacity would speed things up significantly Painting under the cradle supports is a common problem for boat owners. The time-honoured solution is to paint around the support, then get the yard to move it before painting the bare areas. You have a number of options when it comes to paint. Some people prefer to use a hard antifouling, like International’s Trilux, which will keep the line free from fouling but which, unlike most antifoulings, contains no copper oxide so won’t oxidise at the waterline. ACRYLIC is used as an insoluble binder when dissolved in solvent. A high acrylic/ low rosin ratio is used in hard, slow-release paints, whereas a low acrylic/ high rosin ratio is used in high eroding paints. But it was probably the most effective. Larger versions have a knob on top for two-handed work that allows you to put a lot of force into it. The tungsten-carbide blade stayed sharp for longer than those of the triangular scraper.