Painting schedule. You need one

I decided to try a different paint layout on my hull. JRay and his really cool yellow strips hull inspired me to go for it , even if I don't have any painting experience, except painting the walls of my first daughter bedroom.

And that was long time ago...

But building this boat has taught me that nothing is impossible and that with a little patience, planning and care one can pretty much do anything...even building a boat !

So my hull will be red, white and grey. And since it will stay in the water year long, I will have to use antifouling. Sounds easy ?

In my case I have to use just about all of the Interlux products.

I had already applied a coat of Epoxi Primekote all over the hull and though I was doing good but when I went to the store to purchase another can for the second coat, I found out that they do not sell the stuff in Turkey anymore.

So I had to find an alternative product that could be laid over that initial Primekote.

To make a very long story short, here is what I will use for the sides :

-epoxi primekote

-Interprotect

-Perfection undercoat

-Perfection

-Perfection Plus as a glaze coat on top of red (read on to follow me)

And for the bottom hull:

-Interprotect

-VC Tar2

-VC OFFshore

İ İf you take into consideration that ALL products have different minimum and maximum overcoating times, that many coats of each need to be applied and that some need to be sanded in between coats and some dont, the work schedule is simply nuts !

İ mean it seriously took me over an hour looking at all spec to finally determine the proper sequence and time schedule..... of how and when to apply each coat !

And then when I thought I was all set, I came across this fine print on the specs of Red Perfection:

"if Red Perfection is to be used, then a full coat of glazecoat should be used as a final coat after full opacity has been achieved with the pigmented system to prevent premature loss of gloss or color change".....
So no matter how easy İ would like things to be, İ guess that is not the case.

First thing I did was to draw the layout I wanted on my hull. I actually had previously taped some large sheet of papers on which to draw.

And instead of looking at my hair, or lack of, check out another one of my really hightech tools which was needed for drawing those nice curves...! My garage hose worked perfectly.

Then I cut out the template with the help of my little one.

Once that was done, I applied one coat of Interprotect on the hull. It looks really nice although the final surface is not the smoothest. But I guess it is a good texture for a primer.

Then I placed the template back on the hull, placed good quality taped around it making sure I left a margin of about half an inch, and painted the Perfection undercoat.
As you can see on the picture the contour lines are not really precise but that does not matter since the white will be covered over with red on one side and grey on the other one.

And yes, I managed to let my roller pass by the tape....No big deal really since all that grey Interprotect will eventually be covered with white Perfection Undercoat.

I like it. It gives a good idea of things to come.