coppercoat application - spraygun?

[Birdseye]

I have previously coated a boat by roller and indeed have sprayed a car ( orangepeel galore!) , garden furniture and even a mast but wonder if its practical for a non professional to apply Coppercoat using a spraygun. My set uop is a domestic sized air compressior and a half decent gun to go with it.

Anyone done this DIY?

 

[dansaskip]

I have previously coated a boat by roller and indeed have sprayed a car ( orangepeel galore!) , garden furniture and even a mast but wonder if its practical for a non professional to apply Coppercoat using a spraygun. My set uop is a domestic sized air compressior and a half decent gun to go with it.

Anyone done this DIY?

It is recommended that coppercoat is rolled on. I’d stick to the recomendation

 

[PCUK]

Not possible.

 

[Buck Turgidson]

Not possible.

For you perhaps but the people who actually make copper coat think it is and say so on their website.

 

[Zing]

It’s so quick with a roller, why bother?

 

[paulajayne]

Copper particles would block nozzle i would imagine.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

Coppercoat provides a uniform thickness so the area of your hull determines the volume of copper coat supplied. Application is best made by single roll over hull, letting it part dry then another roll, and then repeat until none left.

Very easy

So application method assumes thickness given by foam or similar roller. It might be hard to do the same with sprayer and as others have said the nozzle would need to let copper particles through and I have no idea what nozzle one might need or if the particles are uniform.

 

[rib]

I would of thought premature curing would be the problem on a domestic set up.. The copper coat would not be that more difficult than metallic going through the nozzle using the right nozzle in the first place

 

[CrikeyChris]

A 'domestic sized compressor', suggests to me a 25-50 litre compressor and probably 1 - 2.5 hp. I think these would struggle to output the volume of air required at a near constant pressure. I'm not sure of the viscosity of copper coat but imagine it higher than top coats for cars etc. I'm sure it is possible to get a spray gun / nozzle and compressor suitable but it could be expensive. Also I have read that the copper particles settle out very quickly - probably not a big problem with a roller agitating the contents of a tray but not so easy in a spray gun setup. Possible spray guns to look at are 3M HGP Accuspray (the pressure pots, liners and lids are sold separately) and the G100(?) spray gun, as sold by East Coast Fibreglass and others, to spray gelcoat and heavy primer.
I think I agree with all the above that it would be easier and better to apply by decent rollers. If you do try it I would be interested to hear how it went.
Good luck

 

[anoccasionalyachtsman]

I use a zinc based paint with a 250l tank compressor, no problem with supply, but as @CrikeyChris suggests, keeping the stuff in suspension is really hard work.

 

[Skylark]

An interesting thread. I've no experience of coppercoat but I'm amused by the number of posters who think using a roller on the hull underwater profile is easy. Applying antifoul by roller is without a doubt the worse job I do on my boat. I recently bought and used an electric HVLP compressor to paint garden fences and immediately thought about using it for antifoul. I was very impressed with its ability to cope with varying paint viscosity. I would love to try to spray my hull but the boats in my yard are packed like sardines so overspray would be near impossible to avoid.

 

[oldmanofthehills]

An interesting thread. I've no experience of coppercoat but I'm amused by the number of posters who think using a roller on the hull underwater profile is easy. Applying antifoul by roller is without a doubt the worse job I do on my boat. I recently bought and used an electric HVLP compressor to paint garden fences and immediately thought about using it for antifoul. I was very impressed with its ability to cope with varying paint viscosity. I would love to try to spray my hull but the boats in my yard are packed like sardines so overspray would be near impossible to avoid.

No one said painting antifouling or copper coat would be pleasant but only that is was easy. My beloved Navigator manages antifouling on her own each year, leaving me to sort engine and electronics, and and even at 70 sustaining no worse ill effects that blue streaked hair and knee creakyness needing alcoholic treatment (wine). Coppercoat might be a bit more strenuous.

Having used my sons commercial sprayer with its 5m spraypipe, for both paint and plaster sealant, we found a great tendency to clog if thickness varied, and cleaning then restarts caused runs or unevenness.
The paint is left in its tin/tub with feed pipe to the pump and then feed to sprayer so stirring is possible, though that became a 3 man task on the thicker mix. One to stir, one to spray and one to move kit along, remove pipe kinks etc, and we struggled as there were only two of us so instead thinned mix and gave extra coat.

I dont know how it would pan out with such a dense material as copper in the mix

 

[Seven Spades]

I had my last boat copper coated and it was rollered on and worked well. So I took my new boat to the same place I subsequently found that they had sprayed it. It looks good and has gone green after two years. However if I had been asked I woudl not have agreed to it being sprayed. I believe that to spray it they have to thin the epoxy which logically means it will be a thicker coating and so harder for the particles of copper to reach the surface. I might be wrong and that the thinners just evaporates I don't know. What I do know is there was a chap with an Oyster who had coppercoat applied and the instructions were not followed and it didn't really work, they had to re do it correctly. What was interesting was they did a test patch first and the difference between the test patch and the rest of the boat was amazing.

You will hear people with very strong views about the product and I think it is because if is isn't applied correctly it doesn't perform well. If on the other hand you get the application spot on then it is an excellent product. It definitely gets more slime than traditional antifoul but it lasts longer and doesn't seem to get any barnacles in my experience. If I was a racer I would probably go antifoul but as a cruiser I am coppercoated.

 

[coveman]

An interesting thread. I've no experience of coppercoat but I'm amused by the number of posters who think using a roller on the hull underwater profile is easy. Applying antifoul by roller is without a doubt the worse job I do on my boat. I recently bought and used an electric HVLP compressor to paint garden fences and immediately thought about using it for antifoul. I was very impressed with its ability to cope with varying paint viscosity. I would love to try to spray my hull but the boats in my yard are packed like sardines so overspray would be near impossible to avoid.

The advantage with coppercoat is that you hopefully only need to do the "worst job" once every 8-10 years. But to get it right you need to follow exactly the manufacturers instructions - ie do not cut any corners!

 

[[70521]]

Anyone done this DIY?

No. But Mylor, near Falmouth, did it professionally and did a magnificent job at a good price.

I would never, ever do a whole boat as a DIY project.

 

[Daydream believer]

For a start I would expect the spray equipment to be pressure spray gear not air type as one uses in a domestic situation. Decent kit will have an inbuit stirrer. As for thinning, I note that when I did my keel & rudder I did them separately to the hull, as I wanted to do the patches where I had moved the cradle supports. I thinned the material to the max allowed in the instructions & it rolled on easier. The final results were better as it was the only areas that worked better than the hull, Which failed miserably.
So I would surmise that if one had to thin to spray it would NOT be detramental to the end product , provided done within the prescribed limits. Obviously the ability of the operative will have an effect. That might mean that roller application asures a more even coating for those not experienced in the operation

 

[Elessar]

Not possible.

Yes it is. I’ve done it.

You need a pressure pot. A normal spray gun doesn’t work Coppercoat is too heavy.

You‘ll need two people mixing and one spraying. Each mix goes on in about 6 -8 minutes.

It’s hard to get the pressures right. But once right you get a super finish and it’s super quick.

The hassle of setting up, masking and cleaning the kit means it just isn’t worth it below about 60 ft.

 

[Elessar]

blast from the past.

I sprayed this and was on board for this video.

 

[Elessar]

And whilst I’m showing videos this is my boat being done last year. Notice I didn’t bother spray it even though I still have all the kit. It’s too small to bother.

 

[thinwater]

Rolling the underside of a boat is dead easy. If you think it is hard, either you are doing it all wrong, or you've lived a blissfully sheltered life without hard jobs. It's practically relaxing.

(Stripping is on the hard-job list. Cleaning oil tanks and commercial fishing are hard.)