Recommendations for repainting the inside of a boat please!

[edp]

Hi all,

I inherited a 22' aluminum bayrunner boat by Valco, was my fathers, early 90's heavy gauge aluminum & painted blue on the interior (bare aluminum exterior) the paints faded & it'd look great with a new coating I'm just not sure what to use. It has a speckled paint scheme, blue with white fleck & its probably easiest to repaint in blue but I'm looking for ideas & suggestions for materials & methods for repainting aluminum.

Any helps appreciated, here's a pic.

thanks ,Evan

 

[Bob Hollinshead]

First step would be to strip it and remove any oxidation, prep the aluminum for epoxy primer and use a good quality singlestage paint, the speckled effect is easy.

 

[edp]

HI Bob, I pressured washed it twice already & that blew away most of the oxidized & faded top layers of paint. I've seen some newer aluminum boats like a Wooldridge that had a nice tan painted interior but looked like a really heavy texture almost like a bedliner product but thinner.

I have the Schutz gun for the 3M undercoating, wonder if that'd work for the speckled effect?

 

[Bob Hollinshead]

If it's just dots of color you can do it easily with a gravity feed gun by over reducing your paint, restricting the trigger pull to almost zero, and dial the pressure down to 2-5lbs. Test it out to get your settings right, done it many times with numerous coatings.

 

[5wndwcpe]

If it's just dots of color you can do it easily with a gravity feed gun by over reducing your paint, restricting the trigger pull to almost zero, and dial the pressure down to 2-5lbs. Test it out to get your settings right, done it many times with numerous coatings.

Learn something new everyday, thanks Bob.

 

[edp]

it is kind of dots, more like heavy texture though. Im sure it was sprayed on but probably in the method as Bob describes but with a much thicker paint material as they're kind of blob like splatters not just paint dots. thats what made me think of the schutz gun for undercoating result.

What do you guys think of a bedliner type product for rolling over the floors, I need to replace a few pieces of the flooring with some new marine plywood & thought about rolling all the floorboards in a Lizard skin of SPI bedliner type product - would SPI bedliner work well for this?

 

[5wndwcpe]

The last two boats I did I used two coats of polyester resin on the plywood first (all six sides) and covered it with a good grade of indoor/outdoor carpet. It's easy on bare feet, completely washable and makes for a sharp looking interior. I don't know where you're located but methinks that bedliner would get mighty hot after several hours of direct sunlight.

 

[edp]

thats a good point about the heat although the current deck coating is a black patterned coating on top of the original plywood. THe weird thing I cant seem to find any of that type of material in aftermarket - makes me wonder if it was some proprietary product for Valco at the time they made boats. Its almost like its either a really thin laminate or an embossed pattern, not sure which.....

I'm in the Seattle area so you'd think I could find almost anything marine here but not easily.

 

[AndyK]

The last two boats I did I used two coats of polyester resin on the plywood first (all six sides) and covered it with a good grade of indoor/outdoor carpet. It's easy on bare feet, completely washable and makes for a sharp looking interior. I don't know where you're located but methinks that bedliner would get mighty hot after several hours of direct sunlight.

I did that once as well on 20' wood floored I/O boat. I remember when I went to sell it, the one guy starts jumping up and down on the floor to test it and I just smirked and said you aren't going to break this floor. :encouragement:

As said, carpet is the easier and cooler route. If you go bedliner or Lizard Skin you need to add an anti-skid agent (usually sand blasting sand) for anti-skid effect or you will bust your rear when wet.