Paint Prayer...

[Chris Krumm]

I am painting the outside of a strip wood epoxy kayak and canoe. Hull was sprayed with Interlux 404/414 epoxy primer, which set up hard overnight and made a great base for paint.

Then I sprayed Blue Water Marine Mega Gloss 1-part polyurethane enamel (their equivalent to Interlux Brightsides). Problem is I have a couple of runs and some build-up at inside corners that isn't hard after 2 days. The surface is smooth, but soft underneath. The paint film is hard where sprayed on thinnest, can still dent with a fingernail where the film is thicker. So I need to work on my spray technique with enamels.

Will this poly enamel harden so I can sand if I'm patient, or am I hosed? The thought of scraping half-cured goo off has no appeal. Thanks.

Chris Krumm

[Bruce Hooke]

I'd give it some time yet, but the worst case should be to scrape or sand just the soft areas until you get down to a solid base and then feather out the edges around the area and then apply another coat. That shouldn't be too hard unless there is a lot of it.

[Wild Wassa]

Chris, following on from Bruce, if you can keep the temperature around 20-22C the drips can take as little as 4 days to harden or up to 14 days to harden uniformly. If the temperatures drop at night it can take a bit longer. The soft centres can still rupture when you sand them if the drips are not unifornly hard. If you keep going with the finger nail test, you will get to the point where the poly will spring back when the drips have hardened adequately. When the poly is well cured and uniformly hard it will be too hard to drive your nail into. This could be about 30 days.

Warren.

[ 08-08-2004, 11:23 AM: Message edited by: Wild Wassa ]