The Ultimate Guide to Antifouling Gold Coast

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After a few years of a boat’s use, a buildup of thickness on your boat hull is a common occurrence. It reaches a point where it calls for a strip back to the bare hull. The exercise ought to be done every four to five years of use. Antifouling in Gold Coast can be a tedious task, but the good thing is; the more antifouling in the boat, the easier it is to strip off. So it is reasonable between four and five years before attempting. After several years of buildup, you will eventually need to get rid of the layers. Here are signs that it is time to antifoul your boat.

  • When there are craters where old paint resembles a moonscape.
  • Flaking where paint has peeled off to leave ragged edges
  • Blisters of water may get trapped under bubbles of paint through osmosis. And if you suspect the cause of blisters is osmosis, you should contact an expert to check it immediately, but if the bottom isn’t too bad, you can take another year of use as you prepare the surface and keying for it to take new paint.

Strip back the paint when it reaches a lousy state. A point to note: a DIY is not a walk in the park so let the experts do it correctly—you better part ways with a few bucks than having to experience it the rough way. There are three main methods of removing the old paint, dry scraping, DIY soda blasting, and chemical stripping.

Dry scraping

Dry scraping is so far the best way to remove old paint from the boat’s hull. There are three scraping methods available; traditional flat-bladed, triangular paint scraper, and a Bahco tungsten scraper with carbide blades. The edge is sharpened with a grounding wheel and with rounded corners is an excellent device to lift off flakes on light duty, but for heavy-duty antifouling, it tends to gouge the gel coat. The triangular paint scraper with all sides grounded with a sharpening wheel makes antifouling a boat with over 20 years’ worth of paintwork a walk in the park. Another advantage is the scraping surface offering you an extra time to scrape before needing a grounding wheel for sharpening again. Using a Bahco scraper is the most effective way to antifoul your boat, it works well if you got the blades at the right angle to avoid biting underneath the paint. Hi-Tech scraper uses electricity to have heavy work done. It is better by far to use than trying the manual options of antifouling.

Chemical stripping

If you are not the type that loves to exert effort to have anything done, this could be the only option that could act as a remedy. It has some limitations though; you can’t use the one that is not safe on GPR.  The downside of using chemical stripping is the time factor. Without enough time to chemical strip, all your efforts will be in vain; we are talking about three to four days before the whole project is completed. Chemical stripping might work for a few layers of paint, but if you are talking about multiple layers of paint stripping, you might have to employ manual scraping to complete the task.

DIY soda blasting

If you are looking to cut down the cost of antifouling significantly, DIY soda blasting might be the ultimate solution in store for your antifouling project.