Ok, 1 Nov, 2008. I've been at it for a total of maybe 20 hours since I got the boat. Picture 1 shows the results of some sanding with 80 grit sandpaper on top of where I had applied PEEL AWAY to the entire hull, (above and below the waterline). I have not started sanding below the bootstripe in this photo. You can see that after I got through at least 4-5 layers of paint and what appeared to be primer, I got down to this white and blue pattern. The white is on top of the blue. Underneath the white, there is mat. I BELIEVE that this white and blue is the original gel coat. It's hard to tell, however, as there are SO MANY layers of stuff above this, who knows. all I know is that under the blue is mat. It should be noted that to sand out a section approximately 1 1/2 foot wide from the anti-foul to the rail would take me about an hour. This picture represents about 5-6 hours worth of work with a 5" orbital sander.
Ok, Picture 2. At some point, the nice white and blue stuff dissapears. And this is not due to me being too aggressive with the sandpaper. Internally, at a point on the hull corresponding to the 'dissapearance' of the white and blue pattern, teh fiberglass is very 'lumpy'. I'll add some pictures when I start stripping the inside. I THINK that some part of the boat has been repaired. You can also see that there are some areas that are grey on top of what looks like the original brown layup. The Brown is what I think is the original layup, but, the original gelcoat dissapears at this point. To the left of the blue and white in this picture, I have applied Interstrip 299, which didn't soften the grey paint that you see above. Because of the time it was taking me to remove the paint with the sander, and the fact that the gelcoat has dissappeared, I decided to get a little more aggressive and just strip off the outer layers of epoxy. This stuff was as hard as glass, and was clogging my sand paper after a few minutes.
Picture 3 shows about 1 hour of work after applying a methylene-chloride based stripper to the paint, waiting 10 minutes, and then scraping with a paint scraper and sanding. Not delicate work, but EXTREMELY effective. I DON'T know if the grey stuff is a barrier coat that someone applied when some repairs were made, but the blue and white pattern is, as you can see, no longer existent. Under the grey stuff is the original layup. (It should be noted that I found the 'end' of the blue and white layer BEFORE going at this with the stripper and a scraper.)It should be said here that the Methylene Chloride based stipper CAN and DID soften the fiberglass. It also softened the paint so that even after 45 minutes, going through it with my sander was like going through butter.
the last picture shows what the hull looks like up close. The blue and white stuff disappears, and I am down to straight mat in many places. I think that the previous owner applied a barrier after an extensive repair. In some places, the interstitial grey stuff seems to be made of a different material (bondo?). I'll have to either apply a new gel coat or some epoxy barrier coat here. Even if I had been a little more gentle with the sanding and stripper, I'd have ended up needing to do that anyway, as 60-70% of the gel coat at the water line is porous with blisters.Now, for those of you who are here from the sail net forums, did I go too far? While I am sure that I will never be able to recreate the beauty of the original gel coat, have I gone so far as to risk a loss of structural integrity? After speaking with a couple of companies who make boat refinishing products, I understand that I can go all the way down to the mat and still get a good result if I am careful. Opinions?
Should I go back and remove the blue and white pattern so that the whole hull is 'stripped' to the same degree before I apply a barrier? The barrier won't go on until the Spring, so I have plenty of time to plan and do this right.
