Paint Duration question
 

You guys that are getting these things painted, how long can you expect the paint to last?

Depends on the prep work and quality of materials and also where you leave it and how you take care of it.

I was looking at my old boat the other day that I sold to a friend of mine .

The Imron I sprayed on it 33 years ago looks as good as new still today.

Paint durability can be measured in many ways. Adhesion, chemical resistance, corrosion resistance, abrasion resistance,solids by volume, color & gloss durability, orange peel, sheen and on and on ....

So why would you not want the best in all catagories ? Cost is usually the limiting factor, that includes material cost and surface preparation cost. So how do you select the
best ? Got o your local automotive paint re-seller and ask for the best/ most expensive paint that they carry. The idea here is if it is good enough for your car, and durable enough to go through a car wash without getting. If yotu want more information ask for a QUV test, Patti adhesion test report, taber abrasion test report and compare paint products based on your use.

Bottom line is do lots of home work, then make sure you can find a painter that can apply that type of paint.

Dont over think it either, major paint brands have done the testing and the cost is built into the product as well as the risk, pay more under a name brand and you will get more. Paying $ 500.00 more per gallon is cheap insurance 5 years from now

James if i remember correctly your in the paint biz. i was always told that much of a paints UV protection comes to the surface in a cured finish and that sanding and buffing can remove some of its properties. Was also told UV protection is one of the costlier components in an automotive finish and, as such, budget finishes like PPG's Omni and Shopline are cheaper because they are not as UV stable. Can you add to any credibility of that?

Dave,

Clear coats are typically used in the Automotive industry to achieve a deeper wetter look and make painting easier when used a base coat clear coat system. Industry does not use clear coats on Bridges, ships, airplanes etc.. It is hard to put a lot of "good stuff: in clears because there is not place to hide the "good stuff" as you would in a pigmented coating. Clear coats can have UV absorber's, redirector's and reflectors to help protect the pigment in the color below. I'm not familiar with any ingrediant in a clear coat that that may float to the surface and be removed when buffing . Any wet sanding of buffing will make the coating thinner and if the clear is too thin you may get into the base coat below. Too much clear can be a problem so more than 2.5 - 3.0 mils of any brand clear can create other problem. We do a lot of accelerated QUV testing with 340 & 313 wave lengths. As a rule of thumb 1 year in a test chamber = 7 years outdoor exposure. If you have a bright fluorecent paint as an example that we know will fail in just a couple months sun exposure you can put any brand clear over top and the flourecent will lose it's color at almost the same rate as an example. When flattening additives are used in clear to achieve a lower gloss these too often under perform for color and gloss retention properties.

In long term testing I have had not had a clear coat that stood out as a winner and significantly out performed others using using cost as a basis of performance, that is the more you pay the more you get when comparing brand name products. Lower cost gloss coatings and private label materials tended to under perform the group. I'm also talking about aliphatic acrylic polyurethane clears as a group.

Purchase name brand coating with a good product data sheet so that you can understand surface preparation, primes and application thickness is very important.

thanks James thats interesting, i have actually been a big believe in quality products pretty much since i have been painting. My main finish has always been PPG's DBC with 2021 clear and has always performed well, never an issue although i have been wanting to give Spies Hecker a try. I thought i remembered one of my reps telling me something about the cost structure of some of the finishes they carried and thought he said UV additives had something to do with it but then again he was just a sales guy with no real technical knowledge. Seems to me he also said the way the drove down the cost of some of the budget likes like Omni and Shopline was with no real color matching support.

Problem nowadays ,as is with most things, the line is blurry between over marketing and an actual quality product. Best you can do is find what works for you and stick with it. I test things on my own trucks and boats all the time.

Understanding the product, having previous experience with a product and having things like the correct thinners on the shelf reduce risk and better insure a quality finish. For a lot of the refinish market it may be a garage queen 68 Camaro that only goes outside twice a year, for that paint quality is not important, but those are the guys that will spend the extra money. A guy on a tight budget refinishing a boat is likely going to save some money on paint leave the boat outside 24/7 and be disappointed in 5 years with color and gloss.

A name brand like PPG DCB series is going to weather very well, has good chemical and scratch resistance and it also cost a little more than the rest.

Measuring color and gloss retention is a simple process of numerical values, however these mean nothing to a person not in the industry. The big automakers have standards that will still have the painted finish looking good if left outdoors 10+ years, but at some point the color and gloss begin to crash at an increasing rate. You may still be happy with the overall look after 15 years, but if a painted sample were held next to you weathered paint you will see a significant difference. One bench mark of color and gloss measurement is in a QUV test chamber and is measured in thousands of hours accellerated exposure.

Now compare that to a rattle can of RustOleaum and the color and gloss at lost rapidly as soon as 1 year with the same exposure. That does not mean a rattle can is bad, it must be used for the purpose intended.

Keep up the good work

I was given that same information when I sprayed the Imron. The pressure was on to get it to lay down as smooth as possible ..
Because there was to be no wet sanding and buffing afterwords.


2 years later I am down in Florida rebuilding a sunk Formula .

I tell the owner I am not experienced enough to try to touch up the little bit of damage done to the Imron on the hull sides

So out comes the hired painter.i could have rolled the paint on smoother than what he sprayed it. Than he sanded the **** out of it , and buffed.

One thing I could see is the black never would hold a shine over the year I was around the boat after it was complted.

one thing i have noticed in my years painting is there really isnt that great of a cost savings using a budget product. You either use more product, its more difficult and time consuming to use or the off the shelf packaging is set in such a way that you are under the illusion you are saving money while simple getting less material, 2;1 mix vs 4;1 mix ratio and reducers factored in etc, even metric volumes can throw off your perception. I do occasionally use shoplines base coat in white but top coat always with 2021. Oddly enough i have found the Shopline 660 quick clear a fantastic spot repair clear, seamless blend every time. On another note that is often overlooked is not only thinner temp rating but a thinner quality has a HUGE affect on finish. Shooting PPG's DCC single stage with DT reducer vs Omni or Shopline yields vastly different results.

now that you mention it i believe i was told the "sanding and buffing removes UV protection" about Imron and AwlGrip . . . . if memory serves . . . which a lot of times it doesn't lol

Interesting thread. I agree with Dave cheaper product just seems that you use more.

Even with things like dry pearls, I was playing with some from a no name web site, did NOT give the same effect and took lots more.

As for the reducers, it's funny how many will say they are all the same but paint supplies say don't mix different brands. I never did, wasn't worth the time and money to find out.

reducers are most definitely not all the same. for example Shopline reducers will work in both Shopline as well as DBC but DT reducers will not work in Shopline basecoats in fact it turns it instantly into a fine oatmeal looking mush. . . . ask me how I found that one out while running low on reducers during a weekend paint job lol

In the automotive paint business the solids by volume is less important and color and ease of use more important. But if a technical data sheet is availible and you are looking for value, look for solids by volume. This is extremely important when using/ purchasing large volumes of materials. A (one) gallon container if filled with solid gold then smashed flat with a steam roller will cover 1,604 sq/ft per gallon per mil thickness. This is over simplified but the math is easy, a standard gallon of industrial aliphatic ployurethane will be 50% solids, that is half of the can is a solvent that will evaporate as part of the cure process and what is left are the solids. If the paint specification calls for 3 mils of dry film thickness then 1,604 sq/ft divided by 2 because 50% solids x 3 mils thickness = 267.33 sq/ft per gallon coverage. When someone says this "cheap paint" does not cover well , you may only have 15 - 20% solids by volume and not only will it take twice as much but it could require 3 or 4 times as much paint and labor to achieve the same finish.

ALL thinners are different, most thinners are a blend of solvents and all are important based on temperature and type of paint used. It is a supper hot day and the only thinner you have is MEK, the solvent will flash before the paint flows and you have a dry paint, and the MEK may break the back on the paint because this solvent is too strong. It is a cold day and you add Xylene, the paint may skin over and trap the slow solvent before it can escape, the next hot day you have blisters in the paint because of trapped solvent. Do paint companies charge too much for thinner ? Yes of course. And how much too much ? $ 10.00 - 20.00 per gallon and many times people will not purchase for this reason. But that same boater has no problem putting in 100 gals of gas @ $ 3.00 per gallon and burning it a rate of 90 gph.

Do not vary the catalyst ratio, do not use non specified thinners, no not over thin the paint for a pretty paint job and buy the expensive stuff.

Lol
To funny, that why I haven't tried it! And I have both right now.

Now I just got to think of something to try my new trippin flake on.

great stuff and info that you cannot get from a local sales rep. My reps are all pretty good but lack real deep tech info much of the time. You know another thing i have learned in my thirty years of painting is buying quality and more expensive paint is usually the cheapest route :cool:

I dont stray very often from ratios or between brands anymore but early on i did a bit. Years ago (like in the 90's) i use to have a bad habit of tossing in a bit of reducer in a 2:1 clear i was using to help flow out. They sprayed easier but i had some die back issues. I upgraded my guns to accommodate the newer clears (at that time) and was able to shoot "as packaged" and never had the die back issue again. Lessons learned along the way . . . .

yeah i was using some Shopline colors for accent colors on a 39 Ocean Express i was doing for a friend in the late 90's and tossed some DT in a small cup of Omni red. I literally mixed, tossed in gun a plugged in airline and didnt even get my first test pattern sprayed. Popped lid and it looked like a fine mush of red oatmeal lol. Once in a while for small stripe accents or really minor stuff i will use a fast lacquer thinner to speed things up but its rare, also never on customer stuff i keep the experimental attempts on my own tubs lol.

help up here in Ontario Canada we have the most god awefull paint suppliers , can not mix or match to save their skins / one is ideal surprise or " supply " / others independent ppg say only ppg no others allowed / 5 star extreme is good nice , no custom colors tints or match / ppg essentials is a hoax dam pricey sovlent an u get a whole 50 % of the can /

Considering it's the OP's 1st post I'd like to know what he's implying by "things."

We did a complete deck top to keel gelcoat removal ,rebuild, reglass , and paint of my buddies 45 foot sailboat a few years ago.

Another buddy of ours was the team leader and owned the paint and glass shop in the boat yard we were working in.

Sprayed Alexseal, as this was his choice. The finish came out incredible for spraying in a open barn and spraying such a large area at a time.

The finish was much nicer than the Awgrip jobs I have worked on before.

He said he had sprayed at least a hundred boats with it and it outperformed Awgrip in finish and durability .

He believed it was one of the better values in a marine application .

I know Alexseal doesn't carry the metallics or colors that many on here prefer these days, but for a solid color it could be the way to go for durability.

just a guess . . . but . . . . i would imagine boats . . .

If you have happy customers and happy employees and the paint last long enough to keep everyone happy then you have a winner. You do have to be careful when comparing in and environment that is not apples to apples, especially about longevity. A boat yard that has painted several boats over the period of several years is an indication of quality craftsmanship, good management and happy customers.

When a hotel gets 3 1/2 stars and you pay $ 65.00 per night what does that really mean.
When you are buying a new TV and it is a model that was just released 2 weeks ago and it gets 5 stars dose that mean the TV is good ? or you are happy with your purchase ?
When a comment is made that I just painted bilge and the paint is fantastic, what does that mean, lets ask the same person 6 months later, 1 year later 2 years later.

If anyone has time to spray up coupons with different paint brands and types and send them to me I will be happy to publish the results this time next year. 1 year in QUV 340 test = 7 Years exposure ( approx)

This test is only for color and gloss retention.

Yes, I was referring to the boats.

I've heard the stories of them being painted, and just constantly keep applying paint sealers like synthetic Klasse every 8 to 10 months to keep it protected from UV rays. I've never had a painted boat, and wanted to confirm with those of you that have experience with them, If you'd at least get 8 to 10 years out of them?

I plan on just running it on fresh water and storing it in a yard.
Thanks for your replies.