Swinging the paintbrush

The big day has come.  Well, a slightly bigger day than some!  Its been a bit warmer of late, about 17 deg C here this afernoon and with primer paint on and sanded it seemed like a good idea to paint the outside of SEI’s hull.

Resene make really good paint,  the staff at their open 7 days a week branches are better informed and usually more helpful than those in the big box hardware stores paint dept, and I often use their paints.

This time I felt that I’d like a change from the usual high gloss enamel, I’d tried their water based enamel on the kayak and while its easy to slap on, and durable in terms of its ability to survive the elements it does scratch easily so I was looking to see what other alternatives there might be.

Sure enough they’ve got a semi gloss satin finish solvent based enamel called “Lusta-Glo”  ( Who thinks these names up?) . The spec sheet said all the right things, and within the limited range of colours in this paint type there were a couple that were close so,

Dark green hull, I bought a can of white which will have a few dribbles of the green added to paint the interior with, and a rich russet red for the gunwales and maybe a boot stripe along the waterline.

I put the first coat on today, brush coated, stroke lengthwise diagonal one way then the other then tip off lengthwise. 

It brishes nicely as long as the brush is kept fairly full, looks ok.  I like the idea of the satin finish, its more workboaty in its look plus I have to admit that one of the things that I like is that it tends not to show the defects in my building quite as badly as high gloss.

Its a little darker than this in reality, not quite Hunting Green or British Racing Green but about as close as the limited palette for this paint could get.  Looks good, but the data sheet says that it wont have its natural finish for a day or two after application.

I have to say it goes on well, no trouble keeping a wet edge and feathering the new paint in as you go.

Just as a by the way, Im trying to reorganise my shop, thats why its all untidy.

It’s a bit of a landmark in the build,  I’ll give her another coat on Sunday then flip her back over a couple of days later and get on with gluing the seats in and tidying up before doing the tinting trick with the green and white before painting the interior.

Soon.  The end is in sight, in this case it’s a double end.

Roll on summertime.