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What paint to use on plywood dinghies?


nanda k

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I don't know ,the previous owner only had it for a year ,the paint was good so he didn't have to touch it up, not sure if I'll be able to truck down the other owners. Is there a way to tell ?

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It's most likely a single pot. A little ecperiance and you can tell with a bit of a scrape with a pen knife. The easy way to tell is to soak a piece of rag or cotton wool in solvent, place it on an area of paint work and then tape some plastic over it to stop the solvent from evaporating. Leave for some hrs or overnight. If it is single pot(turps based) then it will have softened and crinkled up. Two pot will not be affected at all.

If you have two pot on there, then you can paint it in either. If it is single, the single is the only way to repaint unless you want to take it all back to bare wood and start again.

All the usualy brands are pretty good. Altex, International being the two most well known. You won't go wrong with either.

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There may be a simpler way of finding out. Two pot paint sets very hard and is quite time consuming to sand down. If you get a bit of 180 grit paper and sand it you should be able to see the undercoat in a relatively short space of time. Two pot will take a lot longer. I have learnt this from experience when I repainted an old wooden Optimist that had been professionally painted with a two pot.

 

We use a basic enamel on the hull but a two pot for the cockpit because it has to take the knocks on my D's starling. Be careful not to put too much paint on because it all adds weight. You can see a number of Starlings around that have undercoat/primer on only to get the thinnest possible layer. When a Starling is overweight at nationals, you will quite often see sailors out with wet and dry try to sand off some weight.

 

I can't imagine you would have an acrylic paint given its intended for marine use but then again I'm not a paint specialist.

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I just sanded the *&^*^^ out of mine and then used standard enamel house paints, oils based knot water. Seems to have worked OK but have noticed it's knot kids dragging up the beach proof.... but I doubt much would be.

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Best paint to use for a starling is called Durepox - made by Resene. This is the stuff used by the Americas Cup teams...

It comes standard as black/grey/white but can be tinted to any other colour (not sure if they do it for small amounts but the guy I spoke he thinks so - this is after painting my boat white)

 

Basicly, it is an Epoxy undercoat - but it is waterproof, so is often used as a top coat.

You can roll it on and apply extra coats as soon as it is touch dry (20mins?) which means the paint goes on very quickly. You will get a lot of orange peel - but it doesn't matter because once it hardens you sand it smooth. I go over it with 180 to get rid of the O'peel, then work down to wet sand about 1200 to get a smooth racing finish.

 

This paint is quite expensive compared to the one-pack paints, but the biggest advantage is that because it is a sanded finish, when you prang it (and you will get prangs on a starling start line) you just re-paint the fixed area, sand it smooth and you can't tell it ever happened.

 

Problem is that it is a two-part paint so can't be painted over a one part paint and there is a lot of prep work involved taking the paint right off to start again. In terms of price, it seems expensive, but when you take into account that you don't need a top coat it comes out roughly the same.

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