antifoul removal.

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silverdawn

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Hi all, One of the tasks to undertake during the winter lay up is the removal of many layers of antifoul,I have asked a couple of chaps who have done this using a jelly type wallpaperpaste substance with an added chemical which is applied then covered with a polythene and left to
soften the antifoul which is then scraped off, both used different materials one much more expensive than the other, the cheaper one being more successful! but both not very ready to repeat the process if ever again.
I have seen a product on the web called PEELAWAY 15 litre tub £ 67.00 which covers approx
15 Square Metres have any of you used this product, was it as good as the advertising,
or if you have a better method ( excluding shotblasting /soda blasting/farrow system ) our boatyard will not allow us to employ these methods due to environment pollution and the mess it leaves!
your comments and advice would be very welcome.
 
Avoid any paint removers containing methylene dichloride ( aka dichloromethane) as it can attack the gel coat;

International Yachtpaints market a paint remover called Interstrip but I have yet to read anything in its favour

Some people have reported favourably on Removall

Dilunet is a caustic soda based product

The cheapskates make up a substitute for Dilunet with caustic soda and wallpaper paste.

Some have had good results using a power scraper such as the Bosch one.

Some favour the hook type Sandvik scraper.

I know some one who simply used an old plane iron ... which he kept sharp.

There are many products under the "Peel Away" name some contain caustic soda . At least one contains methylene dichloride. If you choose the one you have seen be sure you know what it contains!
 
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Be aware that if you have many years of anti fouling to remove, using Dilunet (& I suspect the other liquids/pastes) will require several applications.
Best way I found was a good scraper, hard slow work, but best results.
 
Having done complete AF removal several times on various boats I would recommend sailing your boat to a yard that allows slurry/shot blasting.
Manual removal to a good standard is difficult, time consuming, hazardous to ones health, liable to damage the hull and not as cheap as originally expected.
In a yard set up for mechanical cleaning then this is quick, gives an excellent finish, non-hazardous to ones own health (and probably not to the operators as he will have suitable protective equipment), allows suitable disposal of the old AF etc. and it wont damage the hull.

I had mine slurry\shot cleaned at Fox's as it was there for an insurance repair. Literally spent under 30 mins sanding the odd bits not quite as good as the rest before priming.,no filling etc. , very satisfied customer.
 
In March I spent the best part of a week underneath my 26' hull with a linbide scraper removing many layers of old antifoul and VC Tar back to near the gelcoat. It was a horrible job to do - slow, laborious, very dirty, required appropiate eye and respirator protection and despite that at the end of each day I looked like a Smurf!

However the linbide scraper is an excellent tool, just make sure you have a decent supply of sharp blades. It's easy to do this, but slow. I was very pleased with my result which was a newly VC Tarred and smoothly antifouled hull. This is my first boat and I now know the bottom of her very well - a useful "side effect" of such work. I saved a lot of money (quotes around £800 for a blasting job) which I could then invest in other improvements.

Next season's antifoul ought to be a lot simpler now that all this preparatory work is done.
 
nimbusgb said:
CAUTION! these products sometimes attack the gel coat.
Click to expand...

Yes they do but you can avoid this by being careful. I have used Nitramores Paint Stripper at my car bodyshop for over 20 years (I would use a gallon on an EX-ARMY Land Rover's before I hand painted them) so I tried this first.

Bit messy but this is how I do it and it works perfectly. 2" Brush, Scraper, Kitchen Roll, metal bucket, Acetone. Thick Rubber "Red" Garden Gloves Goggles.
Apply 1 stroke of Nitromores on the brush on the Antifouling. IMMEDIATLY scrape it off. (and it comes straight off) Pour some Acetone on Kitchen Roll and wipe over where you have scraped. (And its wiped clean immediatly )The Acetone takes away any residue or remaining paint stripper wiping clean the scraped area and dries so quickly that the Nitromores hasn't had a chance to affect the Gel Coat. You drop the kitchen roll in the metal bucket and you scrape the scraper on the edge of the bucket and do another section.

Ok its a bit messy. But a gallon of Nitromores is only around £30,
 
rotating scraper

Hi, I used this tool to remove many layers of anti-fouling from a 29 foot longkeeler.
http://www.cirrus-systems.co.uk/index.php/Perago-Rotating-Blaster.html
It is slow and tedious work, I think it took me four weekends, but the result was very good.
And still less strenuous than scraping by hand.
Be sure to use eye and breathing protection and cover yourself up or you will have paint flakes everywhere.
 
I once had to strip a couple of layers of antifouling from my 22' boat, never again !

It's a slow, awful job, and cold winter tempeatures do nothing to speed stripper on it's way; also despite using self protection gear and newspaper on the stripper, it's a pretty safe bet one is going to get a nasty chemical burn or two.

I will just add a cautionary tale, related to this; when my topsides gelcoat 'chalked' through sunlight and I decided paint was the answer, I had to degrease the boat first.

I used a typical off -the-chandlery-shelf cleaner which contained Oxalic Acid.

The instructions said ' to neutralise, splash on water ', so being an idiot I thought that an indication this was feeble stuff.

As the boat was on high trestles, the stuff ran down my arms as I applied it; fine for a little while, then the burning started.

My hands were almost OK, but the tender skin of my arms was agony.

I tried washing it off in the club loos but no help; meanwhile my girlfriend had gone to get help from a club member who used to be a hospital matron.

In the meantime I actually thought this stuff was going to burn down to the bone !

Pat, the ex-matron, knew what to do and filled a sink with cold water - I had to keep my forearms immersed for over 40 minutes to stop it.

If using this stuff, care should be taken that other people & boats don't get any on them.

Re. your antifouling, I'd tend to agree with the suggestion you get it blasted, but BE CAREFUL.

At our club last wintr an outfit offered a good deal if several ( it ended up as 6 ) boats got together in having shot-blasting done.

Despite specific instructions and their reassurances, the cowboys blasted off the gelcoats too...
 
I stripped two boats in successive winters - my ANderson 26, and then Gladys when I bought her. I used Dilunett with pretty good results. The caveats are:

1. Don't do it in cold conditions, You can get Caustic soda crystallising out and it doesn't work so well.

2. Protect yourself well. I used overalls, wellies, goggles, hat, mask, and gloves. The latter were ultra tough domestics, and I learned the hard way to tape the gloves and overalls together.

Overall, I found it the most economically effective. Dilunett is the cheapest stripper, and worked well enough for me.
 
gasdave said:
I saved a lot of money (quotes around £800 for a blasting job) which I could then invest in other improvements.

Next season's antifoul ought to be a lot simpler now that all this preparatory work is done.
Click to expand...

IIRR my 31ft fin keeler was £400ish for the strip (slurry on hull, shot on keel) and 1 coat of VCTar applied to the keel.

(No lift charge as was out of the water already :D:D:D)

Have hand scraped 18ft, 21ft, 32 ft & 38ft fin keelers - slow jobs all of them.

Wouldnt contemplate a bilge keeler due to poor access!
 
I used Peelaway last winter on my 31' yacht to remove 12 years of antifowling. its a great product which will not affect the gell coat and can be washed down with water.
my biggest problem was the plastic sheet blowing off before it had cured.idealy it would be better to do it under cover.I found it best to leave on for a week,even then in some places it was a job to remove
 
Jim@sea said:
Yes they do but you can avoid this by being careful. I have used Nitramores Paint Stripper at my car bodyshop for over 20 years (I would use a gallon on an EX-ARMY Land Rover's before I hand painted them) so I tried this first.

Bit messy but this is how I do it and it works perfectly. 2" Brush, Scraper, Kitchen Roll, metal bucket, Acetone. Thick Rubber "Red" Garden Gloves Goggles.
Apply 1 stroke of Nitromores on the brush on the Antifouling. IMMEDIATLY scrape it off. (and it comes straight off) Pour some Acetone on Kitchen Roll and wipe over where you have scraped. (And its wiped clean immediatly )The Acetone takes away any residue or remaining paint stripper wiping clean the scraped area and dries so quickly that the Nitromores hasn't had a chance to affect the Gel Coat. You drop the kitchen roll in the metal bucket and you scrape the scraper on the edge of the bucket and do another section.

Ok its a bit messy. But a gallon of Nitromores is only around £30,
Click to expand...

Granted and I have used Nitromors on 2 seperate glassfibre sailplane rebuilds. I did say Caution! Not don't do it :)
 
A couple of years ago I stripped all the A/F off my 30 foot fin keeler. Tried different approaches until someone came up to me and said "Try this" and handed me a Sandvik scaper. It took the whole lot off in two days.
I tried Dilunet and all I ended up with was a sticky mess.
 
Finished stripping my 22' macwester long keeler - as said previously 2 days of purgatory,looking like a smurf at the end of each despite using dustmask,goggles and beanie hat.:)

Used a catspaw type carbide scraper from B&Q cost £7.00, did the whole job with the original blade. The hull was, by my reckoning sporting several layers of various antifouls' which resembled the surface of the moon in places!
The waterline in particular seemed to be scaled up like a kettle!

Left me with a pain in the chest so I took a trip to the doctors, worried about biocide inhalation etc. To be told I'd "popped" a couple of ribs - caused by working at wrong angle when under the boat:eek:
- A quick "hands on top of head",doctors knee in the middle of me back and a hefty shove, - "crack crack" and the pain disappeared:)

Got a dull throb from the bruises now tho'.
 
I do almost everything the hard (cheap) way .... but allowed myself the luxury of having 12 years of antifoul removed by 'Symblast' today! The deciding factor was the keel. I didn't feel I could remove all the rust / get the right finish with an angle grinder. I also argued the hard way may not be so cheap as we live 130 miles from the boat.

Symblast turned up at 7:30am as promised, laid polythene under the boat, completely enclosed the hull with a sheet, blasted the hull / keel and finished off by pressure washing. Looked like a tough job with many layers of Blakes A/F and VC Tar to remove. By 11am they were gone! Hull will only need a run over with an orbital sander before refinishing. They did a great job. I have no doubt it was the right decision for me!
 
Removall from Cirrus Systems worked for me. Two versions, one for spray and the other for brush application. Works slowly ( up to 12 hours) and then you scrape off the A/F. Works better in higher temperatures, so don't wait until depth of winter. Look at Cirrus website for more details. Far less work than dry scraping!
 
antifoul removal

Dilunette works. I was able to remove many years of antifoul a few seasons back but it was a long job. You will need a lot of it. Leave it on for several days before scraping, and try and apply it in warm conditions when it works best. There have been several threads on this topic in the past.
 
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