removing antifoul

[mbay]

Sorry I know this has been done to death.

My prefered method is elbow grease and wet sanding but I lifted my new to me boat out of the water yesterday and as i hi pressure washed the hull down i noticed quite large chunks of antifoul blast off down to the gel coat. is it feasible to strip what antifoul i can just using a hi pressure washer?

Has anyone even done this?

 

[rob2]

Well, it works when the keying of the antifoul is poor, as in the chunks that fell off for you. If you want to take it a stage further, then get a slurry blaster attachment for the pressure washer - it uses a venturi effect to suck up dry sand into the flow, with a ceramic nozzle to prevent excess wear. Having tried this, I must advise you that you need a groudsheet to catch all the sand or you'll be brushing it out of every crevice in the boat for years to come - years without many friends amongst nearby boats! The plus side is that it removes all the paint down to the gelcoat and abrades that to an egg shell finish which gives a great key for the new paint. Of course, you can't do this every year or one day you'll run out of gelcoat.

Rob.

 

[mbay]

Thanks' for the reply, there is not a large build up of antifoul on the boat so i think I'll just stick with the tried and trusted method, I only wondered if anyone had actually managed to pressure wash most of the old antifoul, incidentally where would one get hold of slurry blaster attachment for a pressure washer?

 

[[70521]]

Same thing happened to me this year, again the boat is new to me, and set me wondering. Why spend hours and hours cleaning, sanding and priming all ready to put the antifoul on next year when you could just slap a coat and off you go. Next year the jet wash will clean it all off and a bit more. Therefore over a few years you would be back to a clean hull thus saving a lot of work.

P.S. I don't race.

P.P.S. Well impressed with my one coat of Gaelforce stuff, hull was really clean.

 

[rob2]

I don't think most dealers stock the slurry blaster atachment, but it is listed on the Karcher website http://www.karcher.co.uk/uk/Product...htm?&accGrNm=10053902__Special%20applications

I "borrowed" one from the firm I was working for, although they had never found a use for it, I foolishly took it back. Within a year, they closed our office and took all the gear to germany, damn! We found it worked best as a two0handed operation. Buying kiln dried sand from Wickes or B&Q in plastic bags (select dry undamaged bags), we cut a corner off the bag to insert the pick-up tube and one operator held it , keeping the tube below the sand. This aloowed the said operator to also concentrate on keeping the sand from getting wet. The abrasive area is only around a one inch circle, and although slow compared with a commercial blaster, it reduces the risk to the gel coat as there is time to see what is happening. Wear full overalls, a hat, goggles and gloves - your face will still get exfoliated by the spray bouncing back!

Rob.

P.S. should have included a face mask, sand does no good to the lungs.

 

[mbay]

Rob what model karcher did you use? I can buy the sand blast attachment for around £40 so it might be an option to buy a washer as i don't own one already
thanks'