Coppercoat Quantitiy

Sea Change

Sea Change

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We'll be applying coppercoat in the spring and I'm about to buy the stuff (boatshow special pricing).
They've advised me on the quantity that I will need for my boat, and obviously they are the experts. But I was wondering if anybody had real world experience. I can see why Coppercoat themselves might have an incentive to sell me as much as possible :D

Boat is a 1989 Jeanneau Sun Kiss 47. Quite skinny at the stern compared to a modern design.

Curious to see what others suggest I might need, before I reveal Coppercoat's own figure. And also interested to see how accurate people have found Coppercoat's own estimation.
 
They were spot-on with mine, and there's no harm in ending up with more on there anyway - it'll just last longer. It's expensive* stuff for sure, but nothing compared to the prep work.

Edit - it's not "expensive", I'm into season three so I'm in profit from now, but it's a lot of money upfront
 
Same as Kevin above - they’re quantify calculator was spot on for my boat. Only thing I would say is their ‘mohair’ type roller sleeves were good, but I got slightly better results with a neoprene foam roller - which I believe they also recommend on their website. Very little in it though, I just found the foam roller gave a marginally smoother finish.
 
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fredrussell said:
Same as Kevin above - they’re quantify calculator was spot on for my boat. Only thing I would say is their ‘mohair’ type roller sleeves were good, but I got slightly better results with a neoprene foam roller - which I believe they also recommend on their website. Very little in it though, I just found the foam roller gave a marginally smoother finish.
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Interesting, I used their rollers, but at the the temperatures I was working (a bit cool) I should have thinned it a bit more - it ended up a bit orange peely, which required correction, wasting thickness.
 
Sea Change said:
We'll be applying coppercoat in the spring and I'm about to buy the stuff (boatshow special pricing).
They've advised me on the quantity that I will need for my boat, and obviously they are the experts. But I was wondering if anybody had real world experience. I can see why Coppercoat themselves might have an incentive to sell me as much as possible :D

Boat is a 1989 Jeanneau Sun Kiss 47. Quite skinny at the stern compared to a modern design.

Curious to see what others suggest I might need, before I reveal Coppercoat's own figure. And also interested to see how accurate people have found Coppercoat's own estimation.
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Our heavy displacement 44 footer with a lot of bottom uses 14 litre packs. This gives us 5 coats and a little bit left over for waterline and high wear areas
 
geem said:
Our heavy displacement 44 footer with a lot of bottom uses 14 litre packs. This gives us 5 coats and a little bit left over for waterline and high wear areas
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How does that compare with Coppercoat's own recommendation?
 
Having done CC twice I would go with their advice But get extra thinners & a lot more rollers. You can always use any left over rollers when you make good annual damage. Debris & pots etc all chip small pieces from the CC over time. For that you can buy a 1M2 repair kit
 
Daydream believer said:
Having done CC twice I would go with their advice But get extra thinners & a lot more rollers. You can always use any left over rollers when you make good annual damage. Debris & pots etc all chip small pieces from the CC over time. For that you can buy a 1M2 repair kit
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They supply more than enough thinners. We had plenty of thinners left over. They also provided us with lots of rollers. We washed them out as the epoxy is water soluble. You really don't need many rollers.
 
geem said:
They suggested 15 packs
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It does sound like they err on the generous side- you used one less pack that suggested, and ended up with an extra coat.

When I built the dinghy I used a little over half the epoxy that the designer suggested. I've seen how some people the work and I wouldn't ever accept that level of waste!
When I painted a previous boat using International products, I had masses left over.
So this does seem to be a common theme.

On the other hand, maybe I should aim for some extra coats, for longer life. We don't lift out often (16yrs of yacht ownership and we've lifted out five times total, two of those not for scheduled maintenance). No point keeping unopened packs in storage, we'd never get a chance to use it before the expiry date.
 
Sea Change said:
It does sound like they err on the generous side- you used one less pack that suggested, and ended up with an extra coat.

When I built the dinghy I used a little over half the epoxy that the designer suggested. I've seen how some people the work and I wouldn't ever accept that level of waste!
When I painted a previous boat using International products, I had masses left over.
So this does seem to be a common theme.

On the other hand, maybe I should aim for some extra coats, for longer life. We don't lift out often (16yrs of yacht ownership and we've lifted out five times total, two of those not for scheduled maintenance). No point keeping unopened packs in storage, we'd never get a chance to use it before the expiry date.
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The waterline will always see more growth than elsewhere. Also around toilet seacocks. These areas would benefit from extra layers as they would be scrubbed hardest. We also added more coats to the front edge of the hull, skeg and rudder. Just use up what you buy. The extra layers aren't wasted
 
They were spot on for me, but I ended up doing more coats. Clearly I was laying on too thin because there was white gel coat showing through at 5 coats, but 9 was enough and used up all the product
 
When I did my boat I bought a few extra packs of Coppercoat on the grounds that it was little effort to put on an additional two coats and, in theory, it should extend the time before needing to be recoated. I also bought a ‘spare’ pack of copper and boosted the copper content of each mix by 10%. Whether this made a bean of difference is unclear, but the Coppercoat is stuck tightly to the boat and seems to work as well as anyones.
 
Amlov said:
When I did my boat I bought a few extra packs of Coppercoat on the grounds that it was little effort to put on an additional two coats and, in theory, it should extend the time before needing to be recoated. I also bought a ‘spare’ pack of copper and boosted the copper content of each mix by 10%. Whether this made a bean of difference is unclear, but the Coppercoat is stuck tightly to the boat and seems to work as well as anyones.
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You have to be careful of shelf life with the epoxy. It's not really worth carrying any. Just buy it as you need it.
We also added extra copper to our epoxy on the last two coats. We will see how it performs when we get back to the Caribbeans super high fouling rate
 
AntarcticPilot said:
When I did it, the advice was to apply the amount calculated by AMC's calculator in as many THIN coats as possible. You don't calculate it by the number of coats, but by the total quantity.
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I have applied it 3 times. The yard I was in last winter do it regularly. Applied correctly with the rollers supplied by AMC, you should end up with 5 coats.
The first coat feels like you have applied hardly anything. The second coat makes a bit of a difference and the third coat start to provide total cover. The fourth and fifth coats, are building up the thickness. This is how it's worked for me and AMC agreed when I talked to them about it. There is no need to add lots of thinners unless you are doing it in bright sunshine on a very warm day. We did ours in a big shed with the doors open to aid the drying between coats. We got all five coats on in a day as required with 3 of us. The last bits of coppercoat gave us 6 coats on high wear areas
 
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