On Sunday morning I finished up some final remaining masking details, did a careful wipe down of all surfaces, and got going on the paint. There were some frustrating moments along the way, including this guy who decided to kill himself immediately after my first coat:
Another fubar was not mixing enough paint for the first coat, so I had to stop in the middle and mix another batch. After that, when I refilled my paint cup I didn't get the paint cup cover screwed on tight enough, causing the gun to leak around the seal when I started spraying again. I didn't realize at first what was going on, so had no choice but to leave the tent and disassemble the gun looking for the problem. Thankfully no leaking paint was spilled on the boat itself, but I can tell you that I was definitely using some choice words during this stage.
It might be interesting to describe how I managed painting the upper parts without dragging any hoses in the paint. Hopefully this make sense:
- Stand next to boat. Take and hold deep breath, disconnect respirator air supply and gun air supply lines.
- Feed air lines up and over the horizontal tent support bar (you can see it in the picture above.
- Reconnect air lines. (Respirator line first - then take a breath.)
- The air lines are now feeding over the tent support bar.
- Climb up the ladder, then step carefully over onto the port side cockpit seat non-skid mask area (which I had used extra tape on to reinforce since I knew I'd be stepping on it)
- Hold the gun in one hand, and hold the hoses high with the other hand. Step carefully on to the cockpit deck surface.
- Step carefully through the main hatch opening onto the settee seats.
- Spray upper deck around the coaming.
- Spray inner surfaces of coaming.
- Turn around ever so carefully, making sure to not bump into the inner coaming surfaces. (Despite this alleged caution I did bump into the inner coaming at least once or twice. :))
- Spray inside of match hatch flange.
- Step carefully back onto cockpit deck non-skid mask area.
- Spray inside cockpit areas.
- Step back up onto port cockpit seat non-skid area, then back onto ladder and down.
All of these steps are done with gun in one hand, and the other hand carefully holding the hoses as high as possible. All in all it wasn't the easiest thing but it got the job done.
One thing I did not anticipate was the fact that as overspray got on the bottom of my shoes, this caused them to stick to the non-skid masking and lift it off in some spots. Was surprised by that but didn't cause any fatal damage, just a little overspray here and there.
So how did it turn out? Really good in most areas, but I got some heinous runs in other spots. (disappointing but oh well).
The following pics were taken the next day after I had removed almost all of the masking.
Cockpit turned out nice:
Aft:
There are some runs in this pic if you zoom in:
Warts aside, this is good progress. :)
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