Wondering if any have sand blasted before painting instead of scotch brite on the whole boat? I would think lightly sandblasting would be quicker than sanding the boat by hand. All 1/8" aluminum construction. Also, wondering about brands of self etching primer.
My plan was to :
lightly sandblast everything
scotchbrite over the main rubbing areas
wash with dawn dishsoap a couple times, rinse and let dry
wipe with acetone and let dry
self etching primer
base coat olive drab green
then camo patterns.

Do I need to wetsand the olive drab before patterns?
Does this sound reasonable?

You run the risk of warping the hull if you sandblast it. Remember a guy on here a while back that had a buddy offer to do this for free, then totaled the boat..

Never heard of sand blasting. I sanded, then used alumabrite to etch. Washed it and wiped with acetone, then painted. The paint I used was a 2 in 1 primer paint from Camo Designs.

thanks guys

Where did you get the alumibrite?

scotch brite, did not mention alumabrite

You can get it at O'Reilly's, just ask for it, usually keep it in the back.

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We have had 3 boats powder coated and they were sand blasted before hand with no problems.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=66029

I had the bottom of my boat sand blasted before i put gator glide on it, came out perfect. Much easier than sanding. Make sure you take it to a professional and not your buddys friend doing it for a case of beer.

camo designs will not ship paint although they did give me the lowdown on the prep they recommend.

Found some paint online "bottompaint store" sounds promising. Gonna hit everything with the scotchbrite, spray on an etching coat, rinse, dry, axcetone, wipe, dry, paint.

Would love to see some stencil patterns over a deep green base.
THanks all

Degrease it (if that wasn't mentioned) they put a film on all new aluminum, it burns out of the wilds but that's it. Acetone will remove some. Alum-a-brite does not touch grease or oil. Degreasing is cheap, easy and good insurance. then the rest as mentioned.

Simple Process:

1: Use Lacquer Thinner (not Acetone). Make a thick layer wiping pad of shop rags (blue towels) and soak it to running off. Wipe, turn, wipe, turn, tearing off top layer as it gets grey. Do this on all surfaces. Lacquer thinner stays wet longer then acetone and will draw oils etc into the rags.

2: DA with 100-120 grit sand paper and SS wire wheel areas you can't sand to dull uniform scratch.

3: Repeat step one to reclean and remove dust.

Ready to prime. You must use a very good 2 part Etching Catalysis Primer (Primer and Wash Catalysis) and put it on per instructions (it has to stay wet long enough to actually etch the metal, to much air pressure and it will dry to quickly and not "bit" into the metal.

4: Top Coat with good paint (Kem 400) within time window for the primer.

There are other water based cleaners out there we have tried, but none seem to work as well as straight Lacquer Thinner for cleaning oils from aluminum.

PW

Thanks a lot. WE have actually always used lacquer thinner to wipe down for our normal steel painting. Thank you again.

Glad we could help.

PW