Painting the deck
It was time to paint the deck and freshen up the nonskid on Papoose. I
allocated 7 days for the job. It took 10 thanks in to some degree to the
failure of a new low stick 3M tape to perform as expected. I thought I
would share the experience both as many people have asked me how you redo a
deck, and to warn people about the problems I had.
Day 1. Power wash the deck.
Day 2. Address all the little cracks, fill in areas with West System epoxy.
Day 3. Sand smooth and prime
Day 4. Light sanding and paint the areas that will not have non skid
Day 5. Another light sanding and second coat and let two days go by for
the paint to dry enough to mask. I would not mask it until the third day.
Day 6. Mask for the non-skid and roll on paint sprinkling non skid
compound on the fresh paint. This deserves a little explanation. I used a
small "hot dog" roller from Ace Hardware. These are low nap but as I was
looking for a rough surface, no reason to tip it out. This went fast. The
non skid was put in a bottle with small holes in the top like a salt
shaker. The only problem I had was that I used an older can of non skid
that they don't make any longer. It is very fine and the imperceptible
breeze of the day caught it and took it almost vertical so it was difficult
to get an even pattern. The version Interlux sells now is noticeably
courser. It should not be as much of an issue. This non skid is plastic
and not as heavy or rough as the sand I had used previously. The problem
with the sand is you can't sand it as it just eats the paper and it
attracts dirt.
Day 7. Second coat of paint over the non skid. This took about 1/2 hour.
No sanding and using the roller it is very fast.
Day 8. The plan was to be done but I didn't like the look and put another
coat over the non skid.
Day 9. Remove the tape and I was done. Except about 20% of the paint came
up with it. Some areas were just the two coats I had put on. Some took 15
years of paint off and left deep canyons. One area, a small one, took off
all 60 years of paint all the way down to the yellow jacket. That area had
been taped many times without issue so I was really surprised that it
pulled off that much paint.
At this point I was much worse off than had I never painted that area. I
had many areas to paint, fill, and prime. It was terrible.
Day 10. Sand, fill, and prime
Day 11. Light sand and paint
Day 12, Light sand and paint.
Done.
I researched the tapes and this very expensive 3M tape was good for fresh
paint and delicate surfaces (1 day dry time). I gave it 2 days. They make
a version with green lettering that is a little sticker. Both are rated as
significantly less sticky than the standard Blue Painters tape. I looked
online for the white 2070 I used to use that hardly sticks at all. It is
no longer made but I found SureTape makes a C-28 and bought a role. I then
tested the tapes. I would put pieces of tape on each side of a piece of
sheet metal and pull in opposite directions and see which one was more
sticky. The low stick tape I used was the most sticky of them all. It was
almost twice as sticky as the standard blue painters tape. It was more
sticky than the green version that is rated as more sticky. The C-28 was
wonderful, easily came off and was about half of the blue tape.
How could this happen? I had used the low stick orange lettered tape two
years ago to put on my boot stripe. We had applied it, admired it, removed
and repositioned it a couple of time. Twice around the entire boat with no
paint pulled. Something has changed.
Right now I painted a test piece with four different tapes to see what kind
of an edge they make. I caution everyone not to use the expensive sticky
delicate surface 3M tape.
Allen