Treadmaster Removal

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grimmy

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20 Nov 2002
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Hi, anyone got any good tips for removing treadmaster? my boat is about 12 years old and the treadmaster is looking a bit shabby but seems to be incredibly well stuck down. I am intending to replace it with teak decking panels in the cockpit area and believe I need to remove the treadmaster first. Unless you know better of course.

regards grimmy

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There have bee lots of posts about this. Physical effort seems to be the only way - as the glue cannot be softened by heat (the treadmaster is too good an insulator - and excessive heat will damage the GRP).

I beleive that I have heard of people using a router to get strips off and then a chisel the rest. - repair any accidental gouges with epoxy...

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Have just done this.

Hot air Gun - blunt scrappers and a lot of time!

The trick with the heat is to get it under the lifted edge as you work alone, then it really seems to help.

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have you considered renovating your existing treadmaster with their specialist paints.

Alternatively if you really want to remove the treadmaster consider a cheap SDS drill (Makro for abt £25) and a chisel point (preferably a tile remover with a 2" blade), this should take a lot of the effort out of removing the stuff. I havent done it myself, but would probably combine this with using the router, route down to the required level in strips, and then use the drill to remove the remaining strips.

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Router

Any cheap hobbyist one will do, the smaller the guide plate the better as you can't get into the edges. Keep it moving to prevent heat build up and keep cleaning the blade.

Work in small increments of depth as the treadmaster + glue will vary in thickness.

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Hello,
I was faced with the task of removing treadmaster from the deck area on a 30 ft plus boat and after quite some experiment discovered that the quickest method was by using a Bosch electric scraper with a very sharp chisel blade about 1.5in wide. Starting at an edge this would undercut the treadmeaster at the glue line and release in strips about an inch wide ,this with practice became quite a speedy process.
The old epoxy and smaller remnants of treadmaster were then belt sanded off (slow speed to avoid melting the epoxy) , and scraped with a tungsten scraper. Need plenty of coarse grit belts though.

After filling the odd area I then re applied new treadmaster with an expoxy.

Hope this helps
Philip


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