Good. I want a fresh paint job and not just a buffed out semi-good looking boat. I then proceeded to use some paint stripper on the thick bottom paint. After a while I scraped it with a plastic paint scraper and the paint gunk dripped on my leg and my arm. Ouch! That stuff has got a little sting to it and burnt the hair off of my leg in the size of a nickel! In addition to that, it only made a mess and didn’t strip off much. I couldn’t even see the original gel coat color beyond the black bottom paint. The next step was the orbital sander. I proceeded to grind with 60 grit and I ended up creating a huge cloud of nasty brownish / blackish dust. I know that bottom paint is toxic so I only did a manageable test spot. It turned out to be dark brown and it was still on thick. The toxic cloud it created on a small 6 inch by 8 inch area was suffocating.
I googled some more info on the net and discovered soda blasting. I found a soda blaster near me (60 miles) and he would do it for a mere $700 dollars! Ouch! So I looked into the pros and cons of sand blasting. There are a few cons to it but it was the traditionally accepted method for a long time. I found a guy who sandblasts tombstones and I asked him if he’s done boats. He said he’s done a few and to remove the bottom paint would be around $60-$80 bucks. I made arrangements for him to do it. What a deal. I ended up giving him 80 dollars and there was an area of about 1 foot wide by 4 foot long strip he couldn’t get. 95% of the bottom was clean. I could live with that.
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