Want to tidy up my bilge and paint. Just found out that Canada's Rustoluem is what we call Tremclad. Oil based Rust enamel. So I'll go with that and use a hardener.

Fuel tank bays: I don't need a smooth finish, but I want to apply some paint to the raw glass. A reasonable sand out sould be sufficient for paint there? The mart is pretty coarse, but I don't want to sand out the matt.

Bilge: I wanted a nice smooth surface. Am I able to sand it down and use a resin to fill in the rough glass? Then smooth it out...or what is suggesred here? I'd rather not sand down the glass matt just to make it smooth. Not aure how much strength it would remove. Certainly pull a lot of energy out of me...

I also have an issue of the fuel tanks causing an issue and blocking the cuddy drain holes. Cobalt failed here pretty hard. The rubber neoprene fuel tank support system would jot have let water drain through to the engine bilge anyway. They were place across the tanks, with no gaps.

The best solution would be to run pvc tubing through, under the tanks, glassed in. Not very much room there.

Maybe the best solution is to put a bilge pump under the cuddy floor? Not ideal, but I don't expect any serious water in the cuddy unless there's an emergency, and a 3rd bilge pump is always a good thing.

2 is 1, and 1 is none.

I'll snap some pics tomorrow.

Art

rustoleum works great
but!
takes a day or 2 to dry up so hardener may help !
and don't apply to thick cause it will drag down to the bottom of the v hull, take a week to dry, then have small cracks in it!

show pictures !

I used to paint a bunch of the local guys stock cars. I haven't used activated tremclad in 25 years, but when I did it would have an odd reaction and have small hard bits like dirt. I switched to using Home Hardware brand Beauty Tone and liked it much better, flowed out nice and retained gloss. Whatever you use, do a test panel first!

For prep work, de-grease de-grease and de-grease a light sand to knock some of the gloss off then you can use a abrasive embedded nylon cup, marketed for prepping truck boxes for spray in liner.

Fuel tank bay:


This is the front end of the fuel tank bay. You can just make out the drain hole from the cuddy. It was plugged off from the neoprene tank pads.

Need to clean it out...but didn't want to get it wet, until it gets a bit warmer.

Engine bay:



Stbd engine bay. I've kept the port engine/trans in place so I can see where I can place the heat exchanger and re-locate the sea strainers etc.

The transom had the TRS holes filled in for the Arneson drives. A coarse matt was added.

Mxing some resin to gelcoat gives it a nice clean shiny finish. We've done it a lot.

When your buddy takes a picture this happens I used awlgrip paint and will use again. Have to back drag it a lot but stuffs tuff. Had pulley come off whipple and not a scratch in paint.